Category Archives: Healthy Marriage

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Why Celebrating Valentine’s Day can Reveal Marital Problems

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Today is Valentine’s Day. Today, countless couples will spend thousands of dollars on flowers, dinner and gifts. And because it’s Valentine’s Day, they will pay more than they should.

Valentine’s Day also reveals something and it could be a problem if you are married. For couples, men will pursue their wives. They will make plans, get a babysitter, buy her a gift and make it a special night, all about her. What’s wrong with that you may ask.

Read that paragraph again and see if you see it.

A couple of years ago, Katie was talking with some other mom’s around Valentine’s Day. All the mom’s were excited about a night away from their kids, with their husband and the things he was doing for her. They asked Katie what we were doing. This year Valentine’s Day fell on a Monday and our date night is Friday. She looked at them and said, “Josh isn’t doing anything tonight for me.” They looked sad, poor girl. She looked at them and said, “He doesn’t need to, every week we have date night so I know he pursues me each week and I have his undivided attention every week.”

Silence.

What if, the energy you spent on Valentine’s Day, you spent that each week for a date night? Now, there’s no way you or I could afford what you spend to make Valentine’s Day special. What if you took that energy and money and spread it over the year?

Here’s a successful date night (at home or going out):

  • As a husband, you plan it. This communicates she’s worth your time. She feels pursued. You are able to serve her. 
  • Planning means, you know where you are eating, what you are doing and got a babysitter.
  • If it is at home, you put the kids down so she can relax.
  • Turn your phone, computer and TV off.
  • Look her in the eye and give her you undivided attention.
  • Do this each week.

If, like most married couples you choose to do this once every 52 weeks, you’ll have the marriage most married couples have (which isn’t very good).

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Sex Doesn’t Equal Intimacy

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Whenever I talk with couples that are dating or engaged, at some point sex and intimacy will come up. When Katie and I do premarital counseling, there are 5 things a couple must agree to for me to do their wedding. One of them is that they won’t have sex from that point forward until their wedding night. Regardless of their background, regardless if they live together, regardless of where they are on their journey with Jesus.

Depending on the situation, this brings with it an interesting follow-up conversation. Many couples don’t care, they’ve already chosen to wait and have stayed with that commitment. Some are excited because while they’ve wanted to wait, the lack of accountability has made it difficult and they’ve fallen back into patterns they wanted to move away from. Others are frustrated because they don’t see a problem with sex outside of marriage.

I remember once talking with a couple who lived together. They weren’t followers of Jesus and he asked me if this was simply a way for me to put my morals onto other people. It was a fair question. Pastors are often guilty of thinking of ways simply to make people behave more godly without changing their hearts.

I told him that was not the point of this. Here’s why we ask couples to do this and what I told him:

  1. The bible does tell us to save sex for marriage (Acts 15:20; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:13, 18; 10:8; 2 Corinthians 12:21;Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Jude 7). The Bible promotes complete abstinence before marriage. Sex between a husband and his wife is the only form of sexual relations of which God approves (Hebrews 13:4).
  2. Sex doesn’t equal intimacy. Many in our culture think they are being intimate simply by having sex. For men, when we think of intimacy, sex is what we think of. Intimacy is much bigger than that. It involves sex, but involves be open and honest with another person, trusting them completely, not hiding from them. Willing to share our lives, our dreams, our hopes, our failures, our hurts, and pain with that person. Far too many couples think we had sex, so we must be in love. As soon as sex enters a relationship, it changes drastically. By abstaining from sex before marriage, they are able to broaden intimacy in their relationship in other ways, ways that are non-sexual.
  3. There are seasons in marriage where sex is not an option. Whether that is traveling for a job, health, children, pregnancy, time or energy. Abstaining from sex before marriage helps a couple to prepare for these moments and for the couple to learn they can trust the other. Is a man or woman able to control themselves when they aren’t having as much sex or intimacy as they’d like.
  4. It builds trust. On some level, usually for women, having sex outside of marriage is a trust issue. For men, sex is mostly physical, but for women it is mostly emotional. It involves trusting the other person. Making a commitment to abstain from sex and keeping that commitment goes a long way of building trust for a couple.

There are other reasons, but these are the top ones. After doing weddings for 7 years for numerous couples who have made this commitment and kept it, I’ve yet to have a couple tell me it was a waste of time or be angry that they made it. In fact, I’ve had almost every couple tell me this was one of the most beneficial things for them in their premarital counseling.

Image by Cuentosdeunaimbecila (via Flickr)

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10 Ways to Know if You’re Putting Your Kids Before Your Spouse

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putting your kids before your marriage

No one gets married thinking they will put their kids before their marriage, but over time without being intentional, it happens. It’s easy to do. Kids need our attention, they scream for it (literally). We also rationalize that it’s easier and the right thing to do. Or, we rationalize that we will have time for our spouse later in life, but later in life rarely comes.

Here are some ways you know if your kids are coming before your marriage:

  1. You plaster all over Facebook about how excited you are to take a date night tonight because you can’t remember the last time you had a date night.
  2. The only time you talk to your spouse during the day is for something, you don’t text or call to say “I love you” or “I was thinking of you.”
  3. You don’t touch in public, at all.
  4. Sex is fast and rare.
  5. If you sit down to talk with your spouse, the only thing you can talk about is your kids and what’s happening in their lives.
  6. You don’t have any hobbies or interests outside of your kids.
  7. Dinner is in the car several times a week.
  8. You can’t answer these questions about your spouse: What do they like to do, what is God teaching them right now, what is hurting them or stressing them out right now.
  9. Your kids don’t know what “Mom and Dad time” means.
  10. “Mom and Dad time” does not mean what it should mean. Instead it means watching TV or passing out.
  11. Here’s a bonus one: your spouse complains that the kids come before they do.

Bottom line, it’s easy to do. In fact, most parents think you should put your kids first. This is actually a lie that can destroy your family. Putting your marriage first, makes your marriage strong, which in turn makes your family stronger because of the foundation.

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Date Night at Home

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date night

In numerous places, I’ve written and talked about the importance of a weekly date night, you can read about that here.

Unless you have free babysitting every week, there is a good chance at some point you will have a date night at home. Often, this feels like a letdown for a couple because there is something fun and exciting about going out. There is something freeing about someone else putting your kids down. For Katie and I, most of our date nights are at home after the kids go to bed.

Here are a few ways we’ve made those special:

7 ways to make date night special on a budget.

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  1. Have a plan. Nothing hurts date night more than having no plan. In the same way that you plan going out, plan what it will look like at home. What will you eat, who is doing what, what time will things get started. You may have to be more intentional about the plan for date night at home because you are at home.
  2. Stay dressed up. Don’t get into your pajama pants. Nothing shuts your brain down more at the end of a long day like getting into comfortable clothes. Stay dressed up. Wear what you would wear if you were going out.
  3. No electronics. The fastest way to kill most date nights is turning on the TV, no checking out Facebook or Twitter or your email. Concentrate on each other.
  4. Plan a fun meal. It doesn’t have to be expensive or a feast, but something special. Something you wouldn’t normally eat. Katie and I love to try new recipes, so we’re always searching. Katie uses this blog a lot for our meal plans and we’ve found a ton of recipes that have been great for date night on this site.
  5. Eat with your kids. At home, we do an appetizer while our kids eat so that we can still eat dinner with them, talk with them about their day and it helps to hold us over until we eat.
  6. Know who will cook and who will put the kids down. It might be more relaxing for your wife to cook. She may want you to handle the kids, or vice versa. Whatever it is, communicate that and stick to it.
  7. Pick a night you are awake for. There are certain nights you are more alert and awake than others. Find that night and do date night on that night. If you have a long day on Tuesday, don’t do date night that night. Maximize the night where your energy levels are highest. I find knowing which night date night will be helps me to be mentally prepared for it.
7 ways to make date night at home a success.

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What I’ve Learned from Being Married for 10 Years

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Katie and I celebrated 10 years of marriage this past weekend. Last night we went out to celebrate together and we’re talking through the last 10 years, what we’ve learned, where we’ve come from. I thought I’d share some of the things we’ve learned in no particular order:

  1. Deal with your baggage quickly. You will bring baggage into your marriage. Past relationships, your parents marriage, hurt, abuse. Deal with it as quickly as possible. Don’t push it under a rug or pretend it isn’t there, it is.
  2. Set goals. When we got married, we made 5 year goals. At year 5, we worked on 10. Now, we are working through goals for 15 and til the day we die. Things like: what do we want our kids to know (discipleship plan), financial goals, places we’d like to travel, health we’d like to have. If you don’t have goals, you don’t get anywhere in your marriage, at least, not anywhere worth going. It also clarifies what is important in your marriage. Because some of our goals cost money, that dictates things in our marriage.
  3. Fight for oneness. When you argue, and you will. Couples who say they don’t are lying. So, when you fight, fight for oneness. Don’t fight to win, because then you lose.
  4. Set each other up to win. Too many couples seem set on making their spouse lose. In their career, at home, in their marriage. Instead, set them up to win. Encourage them, cheer them on louder than anyone else.
  5. Define your roles. The bible is clear about what roles we are to live in as men and women in marriage (Ephesians 5, Titus 2, 1 Peter 3). Read those passages, discuss them, decide how you will live them out in your marriage.
  6. Decide you will die before leaving. I think too many couples fail because divorce is always an option, it’s always there. I had a mentor tell me, “Stay married even if it kills you.” To survive in marriage, you will need that kind of certainty.
  7. Know how your spouse hears I love you. Your spouse has different emotional needs than you do, a different love language. Learn it, speak it, meet it. If you don’t, someone else will.
  8. Stay pure. Porn, romance novels, fantasy worlds. These will kill your marriage. I’ve sat across from too many couples who thought these things weren’t a big deal, they will destroy your marriage.
  9. Find your identity in Christ, not your spouse. Your spouse did not die on the cross and rise from the dead for you, Jesus did. Your spouse cannot be Jesus for you. Find your identity in Christ, nothing else will fulfill it. Grow closer to Christ and this makes all the difference in your marriage.
  10. Your kids come second. Don’t be the couple that says after 25 years of marriage, “we spent our whole marriage pouring into our kids, then they moved out and we don’t know each other, so we’re getting a divorce.” Your kids matter, spend time with them, but your spouse comes first. What this looks like changes with the seasons of your family, but they come first.
  11. Read about marriage. Everytime I preach on marriage someone will tell me, “I’d have a better marriage if I knew what you knew.” The way to grow in your marriage is to be around couples who have healthy marriages, ask them questions, but to read about marriage. Read at least 1 book a year on marriage. Think about it, you spend all this time being married, shouldn’t you know how to do it and grow in it?
  12. Dates and getaways. Have a weekly date night and get away at least once a year without kids. This shouldn’t be up for discussion. This one thing has done more good in our marriage than almost anything else, except for #9.
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Is Love a Choice or a Feeling (And Why it Matters)

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love

Here is a question that Katie and I pose when we do pre-marital or marriage counseling, “Is love a choice or a feeling?”

In our culture, love is a feeling. It makes you feel light, you think of songs, birds, roses and happy thoughts. It warms you up like hot coffee on a cold day. What this means then is that we talk about love the same way we talk about our favorite team or favorite food, “I love pizza.” If love is a feeling, then you can fall in and out of love depending on your mood or what is happening in your life.

The other side of this sees love simply as a choice. It makes loves into a cold thing. When it is a feeling, it makes it romantic and human, while a choice makes it feel like love is robotic.

I think it is both.

Love is a feeling, this is what will drive our romance and will keep us moving when life happens. Love is a choice because you will get to the place in marriage where you will have to choose to stay married and choose to love this person.

The longer you are married, the harder you will have to work to stay married. If you go into marriage thinking that it won’t be any work or that you can sit back and relax now that you are married, you will have a hard time staying married.

The reality is, each morning, a couple must wake up and decide “I will love this person.”

Is love a choice or a feeling?

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How to Fight Well in a Marriage

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In honor of preaching on the topic of marriage at Revolution this past Saturday and this coming Saturday, I thought I’d repost some of the more helpful things I’ve written on the topics of marriage, dating, sexuality, roles, communication and others topics related to marriage.

Many couples have no idea how to fight. Every couple does it, in fact, when a couple says “We never fight.” What they are saying is, “We don’t have an honest relationship.” So, don’t believe the myth that there is a some couple out there that does not fight. The couples that are healthy are the ones who learn how to fight in a constructive way that moves them forward.

Here are 16 ways to fight (taken from The Book of Romance):

  1. Never speak rashly. Choose your words carefully. Choose how you say things very carefully. Often, how we say something does more damage than what we say.
  2. Never confront your spouse publicly. I am blown away by how some couples will tear each other down in front of other people. If you are upset with your spouse, no one else needs to know about it or be involved. No one wants to listen to you fight. This will destroy your marriage very quickly.
  3. Never confront your spouse in your children’s presence. This is tough to do because stuff comes up. It is best to fight away from your kids as it can really tear at their confidence in your marriage and create uncertainty in their minds. If you do fight in front of your kids (and some couples want to in an effort to show their kids how to fight) make sure you make up in front of your kids, let them see and know the resolution and talk with them about it. Don’t just assume they know you made up.
  4. Never use your kids in the conflict. A fight between a couple is just that, between a couple. Your kids, friends, parents don’t need to take a side, they don’t even need to be a part of it. Turning your kids against your spouse is disastrous for your marriage, family and for your kids.
  5. Never say “never” or “always.” Even if it feels like always, no one does something all the time. No matter how you make it seem that way in your head. This is very accusatory and will make the other person defensive. Don’t believe me? Try it. They will do everything in their power to think of the one time when they didn’t do it, and then what? Instead, use “When this happens, I feel ___________.” You have just said the same thing without putting them on defense.
  6. Never resort to name calling. If you can’t fight without calling each other names, don’t fight. That will not accomplish anything. The point of every fight is to have resolution, to finish. To finish, you need to push towards that, name calling pushes against that.
  7. Never get historical. The past is the past. Especially if it is something you have talked through, one of you has apologized and you have resolution on that issue. Let it go. It no longer is allowed to be brought up.
  8. Never stomp out of the room or leave. This will tell your spouse, “You should be afraid that I may leave at any minute.” This does not create confidence to fight well. To fight well, both spouses need to know that the other will stay there and finish.
  9. Never raise your voice in anger. Kids listen better when we are calm, our spouses are the same way. When we raise our voice, we go on offensive. It is like talking to someone in another language, they don’t understand us better just because we are talking louder.
  10. Never bring family members into the discussion unless they are a direct part of the problem being addressed. This is the same as #4. Your mother is not going to help the discussion with your spouse. It is between you and your spouse and you need to learn how to work it out.
  11. Never win through reasoning or logic and never out-argue. The goal is a fight is not to win. The point is resolution, a way forward.
  12. Never be condescending. This is the same as #5. The point is not to talk down to someone or put them on defense. Being right does not endear you to your spouse.
  13. Never demean. Do not put your spouse down, ever. Couples do this so often in public it blows me away. We need to be building up our spouses.
  14. Never accuse your spouse with “you” statements. It might be their fault, but that isn’t going to help the situation, you pointing it out. Telling them “You caused this” is not going to all of a sudden make the argument make sense. They already know. Remember the point of a fight, resolution.
  15. Never allow an argument to begin if both of you are overly tired, if one of you is under the influence of chemicals, or if one of you is physically ill. Don’t fight at night, you can’t think clearly and seek resolution if you are drunk, tired, sick.
  16. Never touch your spouse in a harmful manner. You are not a man because you can scare a woman or knock her around. Seriously. If your husband is hitting you, call the cops. If you are hitting your wife. Stop. Or, go and fight a man, someone who will hit back. Seriously.
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15 Ways to Improve Your Marriage

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Katie and I often get asked about how to improve your marriage, survive a hard season or simply take your marriage to the next level so that it last til “death do us part.”

Here’s a list I put together on 15 ways to improve your marriage (in no particular order):

  1. Deal with all your junk right away. Everyone brings baggage into a marriage and some couples work through as much as possible as fast as possible and others don’t. I think when a couple has been married for 2 – 3 years, you can tell if they have worked on their baggage.
  2. Understand your roles and live in them. Too many couples think they can have a roleless marriage and it will work. The Bible clearly lays out roles, what a husband is and what a wife is. Too many wives do what their husbands are supposed to do which lead to men doing nothing.
  3. Be intimate, a lot. It’s no coincidence that every marriage book, every couple who says they are happy, all say they are intimate, a lot. 1 in 5 couples has what is called a sexless marriage (less than 10 times a year). The average for a married couple is 1 – 2 times every 10 days. Wonder why couples aren’t happy? Those stats are a place to start.
  4. Date night. I’m stunned at the number of couples who do not have a regularly scheduled date night. I won’t go into much detail here because I just blogged about this the other day (you can read that here). Bottom line, you need a weekly date night, every week, protect it with your life and make it a priority and make it happen.
  5. Your relationship is more important than any other relationship (except God). Too many couples make their jobs, parents, friends, and kids more important than their marriages. Guess what? A day is coming when it will just be you and your spouse. Make that relationship the most important.
  6. Pray together. This is a great way to connect, especially at the end of a long day. It is a great way to thank your spouse for things out loud. This is especially good if you had a long day or a huge fight at night. This is something EVERY couple should do every day.
  7. Play together. Admittedly, this might be more of a man need but do fun things together. If you are both into football, go to a game. Go shopping. Play golf or tennis. Run together. Do something fun that is just the two of you.
  8. Find a mentor. Every couple should have a mentor. From the time of our engagement, we have had other couples speaking into our marriage. They have helped us get to where we are right now.
  9. Put the other person first. One thing marriage brings out is how selfish we are. All over the scriptures when it talks about marriage, it talks about serving each other. If you make it your goal to outserve the other person, you will win at marriage.
  10. Decide that you will stay married even if it kills you (and it probably will). This may sound obvious, but even though couples don’t get married planning to get divorced, so many couples are willing to call it quits really quickly. If you are going to work through all your junk (see #1), you will need the confidence that no matter what, this thing will make it to the end. If you decide to stay married even if it kills you, you can really do anything and get through anything. It will be hard, but deciding this ahead of time will go a long way.
  11. No secrets. It is amazing to me the number of couples who keep secrets from their spouse. I have had men tell me something and then say, “Don’t tell my wife.” Uh, if you don’t, I will. No wonder marriages implode, they don’t trust each other.
  12. Work out of your gifting. While there are specific roles for men and women in marriage (#2), there are many things in marriage that it doesn’t matter who does them. Things like finances. Some are gifted at it, others aren’t. Do the things you are good at, let your spouse do what they are good at.
  13. Men, lead. This has to do with roles (#2), but too many men do not lead and take initiative in their marriages and consequently, their marriages suffer. Men are called to take initiative, to lead with a servant’s heart, to passionately pastor their wives and kids. With Jesus as our model, this is something that will save you a lot of heartaches.
  14. Stay pure. This is not just for men. This is not just a physical thing. It is an all-encompassing thing. Are you physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, mentally attached to someone you are not married to? Your spouse is the person who should meet these needs more than any other person.
  15. Boundaries. Because of what I do, Katie and I have put into place some specific boundaries (you can read about those here). The point is, you must protect yourself, your heart and the purity of your marriage. It is hard to commit adultery if you don’t put yourself in the position to commit adultery.
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Favorite Posts of 2010

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In case you missed them this year, here are the top posts for 2010:

  1. Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
  2. Radicalis Notes
  3. Being a Pastor’s Wife
  4. How a Wife Handles Her Husband’s Sexual Addiction
  5. Thoughts on Burnout, Sleep, Adrenalin, Stress, Sex and Eating
  6. Don’t Malign Your Spouse
  7. Someone Pays the Price
  8. The Role of Men in the Family
  9. Why We’re Homeschooling
  10. Leadership Lessons from the Dancing Shirtless Guy