Operation: Thriving Marriage

Bryon and Jennifer Harvey

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How Much Do We Have to Agree?

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A few weeks ago in a conversation with a friend, the topic of Roe v. Wade came up. As we talked about the US Supreme Court’s decision, he asked me if I was going to address it here. I told him no. I didn’t see how this particular decision was relevant to building a thriving marriage.

Yes, I know that this is a huge cultural shift in the United States. I know that this affects thousands of people as they wrestle with decisions before them and in their past. I know that the decision is significant, but I didn’t see it as specifically relevant to what we do here.

My friend pointed out to me that there is something about this decision that should probably be addressed here.

What if you and your spouse disagree about the Supreme Court’s decision? What if you disagree about other significant issues? How do you have a thriving marriage when you disagree on things that one or both of you think are important.

These emotionally charged issues can be significant struggles in a marriage. In some cases such disagreements cause couples to question the health of their marriage.  I’ve even heard of couples considering divorce because they felt they could not live with someone who disagrees on such an important issue.

So what should you do when you find yourselves disagreeing on issues that you feel are important? How do you manage these intense emotional conflicts?

  1. Remember your marriage is more important than whatever the issue is that you are facing. 

This does not mean that the issue you are facing is unimportant. It means that you have to correctly prioritize the issue and your marriage. In the end, your marriage is a greater priority than this argument. Even arguments over doctrine carry a lower priority than your marriage. In 1 Corinthians 7:12-14, Paul tells believing men and women not to divorce their unbelieving spouses. Our commitment before God to our spouses is one of the highest commitments we have ever made. We must maintain it as a priority.

  1. It is not your job to change your spouse’s mind.

We often say that marriage is about holiness not happiness. Time and time again we emphasize that your spouse is there to make you more holy. It is easy to think in these cases that our role is to convince our spouse of our side because our position is clearly the godly one. We even have Scripture to back up our position. What happens when your spouse is equally convinced that their position is the godly one and they have Scripture to back it up? This quickly becomes a me against you proposition rather than a Team Marriage approach. Which one do you think builds unity in a thriving marriage?

Here’s the thing. Holiness isn’t what you think. It’s what you do. No, I’m not saying you earn salvation by what you do. Salvation was earned for you by Jesus and what he did on the cross. The only thing you can do is put your faith in Him. Once you have received that salvation, though, you grow in holiness, not in doctrinal correctness, but in living a godly life. God made you holy through the washing of Jesus’ shed blood. You grow in that holiness by how you live in light of that reality. In these cases of intense disagreement, you help each other grow in holiness not by convincing your spouse of your side, but by loving each other through the disagreement.

  1. Never stop loving.

The rulers, powers, and spiritual forces of darkness want to destroy your marriage (Eph 6:12, John 10:10). They want to undo the work that God is doing in and through you. They will use these conflicts to attempt to put a wedge between you and create distrust in your marriage. But, the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world and he has come to give you life to the fullest (1 John 4:4, John 10:10). The Holy Spirit can use this same conflict to teach you how to love each other when you disagree. As you learn this deeper love it will bring you closer together and build greater oneness in your marriage. This love will be a testimony to the world of the power of God. The world does not understand how to live together in peace and disagreement. The impulse to separate and form different communities based on thoughts and opinions is of the devil. The power of God brings differences together and says His love and power is greater than all.

In your marriage there will be conflict. You will disagree. In the midst of this conflict you will strengthen your marriage if you prioritize your marriage, do not demand that your spouse change their mind, and never stop loving them.

Who’s The Boss: Dealing With the Struggle for Control

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Back in the 80’s there was a popular sitcom starring Tony Danza and Judith Light called Who’s the Boss. If you’re my age you might not remember Judith Light but you certainly remember Alyssa Milano. For a lot of us, she was our first TV crush. The comedy of the show revolved around the non-tradional gender roles of the successful career woman working outside the home and the male housekeeper. This of course included struggles for control between the two. 

Struggles for control between men and women at home are a pretty common device in sitcoms. Watching these struggles makes for some pretty entertaining television. These same sorts of struggles, while common in marriages, are far from entertaining. These struggles can create conflicts that when not handled well can create significant problems in a marriage.

It helps when dealing with struggles for control to remember why these struggles exist in the first place. The first reason we struggle for control is our own sin. The foundation of our sin and all the sins we commit is pride. In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis says, “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” The first and primary reason we struggle for control is our pride, our sin. We want things to be as we imagine or desire them to be. When things are not so, we fight to gain that control.

The second cause of the struggle for control is, of course, the sin of your spouse. The same pride that lives in us lives in them. The same desire to control situations and outcomes that lives in us, lives in them. Two people with the same desire to have things their way are guaranteed to experience conflict. 

Once we know the cause of the struggle for control, the solution becomes clear. Both spouses must relinquish control in their marriage to Jesus. This sounds simple, but we all know how difficult it is to consistently submit ourselves to Jesus. Even Paul in Romans chapter 7 shared his struggles with consistently submitting to Jesus.

There are a couple of specific things in marriage that will help you overcome the struggle for control. The first is a change in attitude. To stop fighting for control in your marriage, stop thinking that you should be in control. “Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself” (Phillippians 2:3). “You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had, who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself to the point of death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:5-8). This change in attitude can have a very quick effect on the quality of your marriage. When you choose to stop trying to be in control, you will stop fighting for control. 

Relinquishing your desire for control in this way requires a huge amount of trust. How much do you really trust God to meet all of your needs? Your ability to relinquish control in your marriage will tell you a lot about how much you truly trust God.

A change in attitude will help stop the struggle for control. The second change is a change in action. Submit to your spouse. Paul tells spouses in Ephesian 5:21, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Did you notice why you should submit to one another? It’s not because your spouse deserves your submission. It’s not because one of you is less than the other. It is because of Jesus. Out of reverence for the one who died for you and now reigns over all you should submit to each other. Submitting to each other eliminates the struggle for control in your marriage.

Submitting to each other also requires a great amount of trust. It requires that you trust your spouse to not take advantage of your submission. It requires that you trust that your spouse is going to put equal effort into maintaining the strength of your marriage. But then, that’s what marriage is, isn’t it? It is trusting another person to live a godly life where you both work to build a relationship that honors God and represents his love to the world around you.

Who’s the boss? Jesus is. In light of that, serve and submit to one another and you will overcome the struggle for control in your marriage.

Sex and Intimacy

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Questions from the “Under Construction” marriage conference at Grace Bible Church in Ann Arbor, MI.

We were not able to answer all the questions that were texted to us during our breakout at the Under Construction marriage conference at Grace Bible Church in Ann Arbor, MI. In this blog post we have provided answers to the questions we were unable to address.

Q: Sex is almost always scheduled for us because our jobs are crazy and we have a little one. Is that okay? Or should our relationship foster more spontaneity?

A: It’s great that amidst your busy schedules, you have made it a priority to carve out time for intimacy together. If this is working for you then it is absolutely okay! You are the co-authors and co-architects of your sex life together. Your sex life is your sex life. The worst thing you can do is try to compare it to what you perceive other couples are doing or some unattainable idealized expectation. Check in with each other about how your current arrangement is working out for both of you. Are you both honestly comfortable with this and enjoying your sex life together?  Sometimes this can be personality driven regarding preferences to scheduling versus spontaneity. Scheduling will give you the opportunity to look forward to a day and time for intimacy together; spontaneity can be a great surprise to both of you. As you discuss what works well right now, be ready to adjust as your life stage, schedules, and other factors change.

Q: What one thing made the biggest difference in having a healthy, thriving sex life over the years?

A: Time and time again we hear that “great communication makes for great sex.” Work on your relationship outside of the bedroom. If your spouse isn’t already your best friend, take steps to achieve that relationship goal together. Have fun together. Let your spouse know that he/she is important to you and desired for who he/she is right now. Talk about what each of you enjoy and do not enjoy during sex. We recommend that you have sex frequently – whatever you define that to be – as you are able to do in your current context and understand that will change as time goes one.

Q: Could you dive more into what’s the difference between biblical sex and cultural sex? Is there overlap? Or the difference between objectification and cherishing?

A: American culture has cheapened sex. Rather than the fulfilling connection of two people committed to each other “knowing” one another, it is treated as a mere animal instinct. Sex in the mass media is communicated as an irresistible force rather than the thoughtful passion of two people communicating love to each other. Secular culture views sex as merely a hormonal response to stimuli. Humans are viewed as no different from other animals with an irresistible sex drive that must be addressed. Ultimately, our culture says that sex is first and foremost for pleasure and secondarily for procreation. The life-long bond that sex is designed to create and maintain is rejected as backwards and a vestige of puritanical repression. The Bible, on the other hand, proposes a very high view of sex. It is an act of love and commitment between two people. It celebrates sex as a means of procreation, pleasure, and maintaining a life-long bond.

With regard to the difference between objectification and cherishing, author Gary Thomas has the quote “Use sex to cherish your spouse; do not use your spouse to cherish sex.” That means that God has given humankind the act of sex as the ability to communicate love and cherish your spouse. Objectification, instead, is using a person for your own gratification; with objectification there is no mutuality between the spouses but it is self-centered and self-serving. Ultimately we use our spouse to cherish sex when we focus on our own pleasure and sexual release. We use sex to cherish our spouse when we focus on connection, intimacy, and transparency through the physical union of our bodies.

Marriage is More Than a Piece of Paper

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One of the common objections we hear to marriage is that it’s “just a piece of paper.” 

Non-Christians will often argue that marriage is merely a social institution with no inherent value. The only value to marriage is what people or societies apply to it. In which case, marriage is a construct in which you can choose to or not to participate. Other family structures are equally valid and marriage should not be given preferential treatment.

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Why Did God Create Marriage?

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There are a lot of sermons about marriage. There are a lot of books about marriage. There are, however, not a lot of sermons or books about the theology of marriage. There has been a lot said and written about how to have a better marriage. But, there’s not a lot said or written about why marriage exists. Sure there are plenty of books and sermons that go back to Genesis 2 and talk about the fact that it was “not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). But they rarely talk about why the man needed a woman. 

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Don’t Let Your Anger Control You

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What we’re going to be doing is talking about how we can manage anger. Not that anger is ever a problem in any kind of a relationship, let alone a marriage.

We know some families where, unfortunately, the characterization of the family or the marriage is anger. A lot of baggage then comes from the anger. So certainly we’ve got to make sure that anger is handled in appropriate ways.

People have different attitudes about anger. It’s almost cliche that you’ve got the mad parent, right? It seems like people expect someone in a marriage to always be angry. It’s common in a lot of the television shows we watch. That’s a problem because these are the fictitious tv shows, but that’s pouring over into our collective psyche. It affects some of our expectations of how things should be, but I think God has a lot better for us. We need to be following God and live the way he wants us to live. And that’s certainly not living into anger.

People will try to excuse their anger. They say things like, “Well Jesus got mad, right?” There’s a meme that’s been going around for a while that says, “When people say, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Remind them that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibility.” But that’s so out of context. Jesus had a specific reason for what he did. This idea that I’m just going to be angry and everyone has just gotta put up with my anger is scary, especially in families. With kids, if mom or dad is always mad, it’s just, scary. It’s definitely an environment that would produce a lot of anxiety.

What are some things that would make you angry?

Bryon is an army brat. His dad was in the army 21 years. Timeliness has been a thing his whole life. He experiences anxiety when we’re running late. It makes him angry when we have to take something with us and we can’t find it. The kids will coming up to him saying, “I can’t find my Pokemon card” or, “My case for my glasses.” Whatever it is, if things were just put away where they belong, then we would not be searching all over the house. But in fairness in fairness he gets just as mad at himself. Jen thinks he actually gets madder at himself. Bryon gets on the warpath, pulling cushions off the couch. Trying to find the stupid little thing. That’s probably when Bryon gets the angriest. Anger is always that secondary emotion. In this case it starts off when Bryon gets anxious about being late. Then the anxiety leads to the anger.

To be honest though, Bryon’s emotion gets the better of him sometimes and he needs to control it, but anger is not always bad. It is a natural emotion. Everybody is going to experience some anger. It’s triggered by some anxiety or some fear. Anger is a response. It often manifests to help protect from that initial emotion. The anger in and of itself. But if it’s mishandled, that’s when the anger is going to be a bad thing.

Even God, when we look at scripture, God got angry. Look at the prophets. He got really angry at Israel for their idolatry. He called their idolatry adultery. At one point God even divorced Israel (Jer 3:8). God divorced Israel because he was so mad at them because they were doing the wrong thing. They were committing adultery.

It’s okay to feel angry. Going back to the illustration of the beginning. Jesus chased people out of the temple because the money changers and all those people in the temple, they were keeping people from God. They were trying to force people away from God and preventing them from experiencing the fullness God. And Jesus got angry about it.

Yet, if anybody can do the angry scorched the earth, it is literally God. But, that’s not who he is. that’s not in his character It’s not that he can’t act and punish for these sins as he has certainly done. Think of the story of Noah. At the same time, however, he’s always here. He always loves us. He always provides that redemption and that’s particularly the case by sending Jesus to us. That’s important to bring out because also when you look at the prophets, you see God’s sadness and feelings of betrayal. But also, you see, his love. You see him wanting to reach out and bring people back.

Let’s talk about managing our anger though, because we think there’s a passage in Ephesians that really is important for this. It’s something that people don’t always understand completely. “Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on the cause of your anger. Do not give the devil an opportunity (Eph 4:26-27). Some translations don’t say the cause of your anger just says don’t let the sun go down on your anger. That’s an interesting passage because it presumes you will get angry. We all do. This passage, however, is not only talking about managing anger in marriage. If you took this literally, you can’t go to bed, you can’t go to sleep until you resolve this issue because you’re giving a devil’s foothold. Well, if that’s true, that would mean any time you were angry with anyone over anything, you can’t go to sleep until you resolve the issue.

This statement is proverbial. Paul wasn’t giving a command from God. He’s talking about good principles and good ideas. Don’t let your anger keep going. And we’ve seen this, right? When people don’t resolve their anger, it gets worse and worse. It builds and it festers. This passage is saying don’t marinate in your anger. You don’t want your anger to just get soaked up into you.

That point about not giving the devil a foothold is important also. You really do give the anger power over you when you let it fester. When you just marinated it. As you were saying, you give that anger power and control over you and the devil will take advantage of that and tempt you. When our kids were little, we were teaching them not to have temper tantrums, teaching them how to deal with their emotions. Toddlers start feeling things and they just don’t know what they’re feeling or how to deal with it. We would always tell them when they were getting angry, you’ve got to control your emotions, don’t let your emotions control you.

We never want to say it’s not okay to feel emotions because that’s repression, that’s something that’s unhealthy and wrong. Your emotions aren’t in and of themselves bad. They’re a response that you’re having to a situation. We can’t, however, let those emotions control us.
It’s wise to separate; I am so angry at this entire person versus I’m angry or I’m frustrated about a situation. We always talk about the idea of team marriage. We’re on the same team. We win or we lose together. There’s no winner or loser between the two of us because if one is saying I’m the winner, the other one’s a loser, guess what? You both lost.

Even with that we like this language better. I’m feeling angry rather than I am angry. When you say I am angry now, you’re using language of identity, but you’re not anger. We are not our anger. We feel our anger. Anger is something that is part of us, but just as much as our finger is part of us but our finger is not who we are. It’s an aspect of us. If we should lose our anger, we don’t become less ourselves. Sometimes people who fester in their anger become so identified with their anger that they can’t separate what they’re feeling from who they are.

Anger is a feeling felt for very specific reasons. Anger should not be part of our character. That’s something that you certainly don’t want. You don’t want to be characterized by anger. You don’t want anger to be a part of your character.

Sometimes when dealing with anger, the best choice is to take a break and come back to the issue later. But you need to make sure you’re being proactive about that, especially in a marriage. Absolutely. A big part of that is because of the physiology of anger. It’s pretty consistent for most people. It all starts in our limbic system. It’s all a chemical response in our brain to a stimulus. Anger is often because your fight or flight reaction is being triggered. Your body is being flooded with the chemicals that prepare you for action. Your capillaries swell your blood starts pumping. Bryon can feel it when he’s really angry. He can feel his heart start racing. He can feel himself getting angry and a couple of things happen. He grits his teeth. He doubles up his fists. His body is responding to the stimulus getting ready to fight.

The idea is that you’re separating yourself from the conflict for a time. It’s not like you’re throwing up your hands and walking out on or walking away from your spouse. The relationship is important.

You also want to look at yourself and see how you are contributing to this conflict. Dealing with anger requires a lot of introspection. It requires a lot of prayer. You need to discover why you are angry and what part you are playing in the conflict. The answer to that is huge. That’s part of growing in holiness.

So we really need to make sure that our anger is controlled. It needs to be dealt with quickly. Not necessarily in the moment because sometimes you need to unplug and deal with the physiology of it.