No In-law Boundaries? More Marriage Stress.

It’s important to establish healthy boundaries with your in-laws. Otherwise, you can add a lot of stress to your marriage relationship. But how do you go about it?

Here’s what Joan shared with us:

“My husband and I are constantly arguing about our in-laws, and it has stressed our marriage so much that we are unable to deal with other issues. I think the problem is a lack of boundaries. His mom more or less views me as somebody that she needs to compete with. And she also imposes her views. My husband follows through with what she says and it causes conflict with us.” 

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When the in-law problems cause you and your spouse to be unable to deal with other issues in your marriage, then something has to be done. Both of you need to talk about some of the consequences of this continual in-law problem.

Maybe you start that by saying, “How is this impacting our marriage? How is it impacting the grandchildren? How is it impacting the way you and I are connecting?” Don’t place blame; just look from the outside at the impact the friction is having on your marriage. Ask for clarification. See what your spouse is feeling or sensing. Be open. You don’t want to cast blame and get into another argument; instead, you want to get insight into it from each other’s perspectives.

Then you can say, “Can we perhaps set one boundary with your mom (or with my folks)?” Take it a step at a time. And simply through communicating, you’ll begin to understand each other more. You can watch each other’s backs when the in-laws are around. You can support each other in subtle ways. You need that. Remember, you must first and foremost protect your marriage and family.

*For more practical marriage advice, check out The Great Marriage Q&A Book. It's available in our online bookstore!

Thrive Through the Tough Times

If you want to safeguard your marriage against the storms and struggles of life, if you want a deeper bond and a richer friendship, you need the third secret to a lasting love: persevering love. It’s the kind of love that triumphs over trials and grows stronger when you are most vulnerable.

Persevering love doesn’t just hang on through calamity by its fingernails; it hangs in there and thrives. It’s the kind of love described by the apostle Paul: “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance” (1 Corinthians 13:7). Persevering love bonds husbands and wives into lifelong friends.

Persevering Love Requires Total Commitment

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From what we have witnessed and experienced, the starting point for persevering love is an all-out commitment to each other. It’s the tough stance that says, “Our marriage is bigger than any issue. No matter who or what is arrayed against us, we will stand together. Neither of us will ever go through a trial alone.”

Persevering love doesn’t say, “I’ll stick with you because I have to—because I promised to” but, “I will hang in there with you because I care for you more than anything in the world.”

Have you committed yourself 100 percent to endure together whatever life may throw at you? How are you demonstrating that commitment in the face of life’s problems and pressures?

Persevering Love Requires Unconditional Acceptance

The unconditional acceptance of persevering love says, “No matter how good or bad you look, no matter how much money you earn or lose, no matter how smart or feebleminded you are, I will still love you.” That’s the stuff of our wedding vows—for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health. Persevering love chooses to continue loving even when life dumps on us a world of reasons to fall out of love.

Persevering Love Requires Deep Trust

Persevering love is the product of deep trust between husband and wife. Trust says, “I will depend on you to guard and protect my heart and my life, to fight beside me always.” You may need to trust a lot of people to pull you through a crisis. But more than anyone else on earth, husbands and wives should rely on each other.

King Solomon wrote, “If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone when they fall are in real trouble” (Ecclesiastes 4:10). The wise king continued, “A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12). Although these verses do not refer specifically to the marriage relationship, they do reveal that a trust-based relationship, especially one that is “triple-braided”—such as husband, wife, and God—is tough to beat. When you face pressures, allow them to bond you together and build your friendship instead of pull you apart.

Facing trials requires a depth of trust that doesn’t grow overnight. This is why the trust of persevering love grows richer over time, as you each prove yourselves trustworthy to the other. It may be true that trust begins to build during courtship, and your commitment to trust may be inherent in your wedding vows. But complete trust is established over time and under the pressure of daily life.

Persevering Love Requires Endurance

Every kind of trial—emotional burdens, financial difficulties, spiritual questions, physical pain, relational stresses—presents a new opportunity for a husband and wife to persevere. Commitment helps you stay connected to each other through trials; perseverance is the determination to outlast the problems, to help each other get to the other side. Think of the intimacy and friendship that can develop in your relationship when you are committed to persevering through every trial.

Persevering Love Requires Abiding Faith

If marital love is to endure life’s pressures, it needs to be grounded in a sincere, abiding faith in the God who designed marriage. Any of us can stubbornly pursue a lifestyle that our culture deems important and live independently of God. Sometimes a severe trial moves us to let God have his way with us and to see what truly matters in life. We often don’t really appreciate the important role faith plays in our marriage until a crisis forces us to throw ourselves on God’s mercy.

Faith is such a vital facet of the marriage relationship and such a source of strength for building a lasting love.

Persevering Love Requires Diligent Preparation

Anyone who lives near a hurricane zone knows that the time for action is long before the storm hits. Once the wind is wailing, the surf is boiling, and the rain is coming at you sideways, it’s time to head for cover and hunker down. It’s too late to board up the windows, buy drinking water and batteries, and add flood coverage to your homeowner’s policy. The time to prepare for a hurricane is during the calm between the storms.

When it comes to marriage, all of us live in a hurricane zone. And since the pressures, crises, and tragedies of life seldom blow in with advance warning, it is during the calm stretches of life that we must get ready for them. Persevering love is founded on the devotion and friendship a husband and wife build before the storm strikes.

If you and your spouse find yourselves in one of those lulls between storms, rejoice! And while you are rejoicing, take the opportunity to prepare for stormy weather ahead. Now is the time to shore up your marriage. Work on a Bible study together. Take a second honeymoon—or third, or fourth. Read some good books on marriage enrichment and discuss them together. Attend a Christian marriage conference. Seek out a biblically based Christian counselor, and ask him or her for pointers on how to deepen your friendship.

The more you invest in your marriage between the storms, the better prepared you will be to endure the storms together—and even come through them stronger.

*For more about how to unlock the biblical secrets to a marriage that stays vibrant and strong for a lifetime check out our book 6 Secrets to a Lasting Love in our online bookstore!

My Spouse Walked Out

Q: My spouse just walked out. I’m devastated. Where do I turn now?

A: You surely feel like you’ve been kicked in the stomach when this happens—this situation is so incredibly painful.

What can you do?

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1. Stay teachable. Stay close to Christ. Go to your church for the spiritual authority and security to help guide you as you’re processing this.

2. Don’t retaliate. Don’t do anything that will lower your integrity and your walk with Jesus because that will only misfire in the long run.\

3. Pray that your spouse gets through whatever it is he or she is searching for, because it’s dishonoring God, it’s dishonoring you, it’s dishonoring biblical marriage. When spouses do this, they are chasing a lie. They are searching for something, and rather than honoring biblical marriage, they look outside of the marriage. And if other people are involved, they too are searching for something and crossing their own boundaries.

4. Set appropriate boundaries. Seek reconciliation, but be realistic about what’s going on. If your spouse left you for another person, and then if he or she tries to come back to you at any point, don’t step into a sexual relationship without him or her seeing a physician. A lot of people are shocked when we say that. But we’re just being realistic about the possibility of disease. Even if there’s reconciliation, there are still consequences that need to be considered.

If there is to be restoration, there will need to be brokenness and repentance. If he or she initiates some type of contact, you need to guard your own heart. Deal with hope certainly, but don’t be ruled by your heart. Be hopeful for restoration and pray for restoration, but your spouse has to do some fundamental changing and repenting before you attempt to reconcile.

As painful as this is, grab hold of the promise that God is going to forge beauty and strength into your character and your walk with Jesus Christ in your response to this. You’ll have plenty of emotional times, and you’ll need the safety and security of a pastor or a healthy biblical counselor and of godly men or women in your church. They can surround you as you walk with Christ through this difficult time.

Also remember that your spouse is rejecting God first. Second, rejecting self. Third, rejecting the institution of marriage. And fourth, rejecting you. So even though it feels like it’s all about rejecting you, you in many ways are not the primary target. Your spouse is rejecting God, and God needs to handle it. So pray for your spouse. Pray that God will draw your spouse back. More than anything, more than even your marriage, pray that God would reveal himself to your spouse and bring spiritual restoration, whatever it takes. That has to come first.

If you do those things and your spouse does not return, at least years from now you will always know that you walked with integrity. Remember that Jesus loves you, that you are precious to him, that he died for you and he rose again for you. You are his and he is yours. Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.

*For more practical marriage advice, check out The Great Marriage Q&A Book. It's available in our online bookstore!

Are There Sexless Affairs?

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy says national surveys indication 15 percent of married women and 25 percent of married men have had extramarital affairs. When you include emotional relationships without intercourse, the percentage goes up another 20 percent!

(source: The New York Times, “When a Partner Cheats,” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/well/marriage-cheating-infidelity.html)

Yes, you read that right. Affairs don’t always involve sexual intercourse. A husband or wife can be unfaithful without that.

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There is such a thing as an emotional affair, as opposed to a physical affair where sex is involved. You can indeed be unfaithful without having a sexual relationship.

We hear about this far too often. There is a concept that we talk about at our conferences—guarding your spouse’s heart by praying together. However, when a person outside of your marriage union is trying to attach to you by praying for you, he or she is trying to connect emotionally. We say that the person is not “praying” but “preying”—and you are the target. That’s how Christians so often get drawn in. They think they’re having this spiritual connection and that it’s pure, but too often the emotional wiring overloads and suddenly they are in a full-fledged affair. Even if sex has not occurred, the violation of the marriage is just as strong.

Years ago, a book titled Temptations Men Face described twelve steps to an adulterous relationship. The first ten merely lead up to step eleven—and none of the first ten involves sex. Instead, those first ten steps erode a man and woman to the point where they step into the sexual relationship at step eleven. It starts with a sense of readiness and alertness of another person, and then surprise meetings, then planned meetings, then non-affectionate touch, then passionate embracing. Step eleven is capitulation; that’s where the intercourse occurs. It’s important to understand that by the time the first ten steps have occurred, it’s not a big leap from ten to eleven. Step twelve then is the acceptance of the affair.

Women need to understand that if they are stepping into an inappropriate relationship with a man, it invariably will move toward sexual involvement. Men need to understand that women who are especially attentive may be seeking that kind of attachment.

Let’s take a look at the steps to an emotional affair:

1. Emotional affairs don’t necessarily start with an unhappy marriage. That may shock you. It can start with a look that simply says, “I find you interesting.” An emotional affair simply starts with a friend of the opposite sex—somebody at work, somebody at church, a neighbor, or even one of your kids’ teachers or coaches. You may begin to share intimate conversations about the things in your life that you hold dear—your kids, your walk with Christ, your views on the world. And then the biggest red flag is if you begin sharing about problems in your own marriage.

2. The second step is when honesty, vulnerability, and chemistry develop the friendship into romance. You go out of your way to see each other. You have private lunches together. You make or receive calls when your spouse is away.

3. As your emotional connection with this person grows, the connection in your marriage begins to crumble. You share more of your frustrations and triumphs with this other person than with your spouse. Arguments and conflicts arise in your marriage. You may pull away from your spouse and consistently turn to this friend for companionship and support. You no longer feel in love with your spouse.

4. From there it is a short step to the declaration of those feelings and to moving beyond an emotional attachment to a full-blown affair.

We always want to base everything we say in God’s Word. Matthew 5:27 says, “You have heard the commandment that says, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus warned that the first look begins the connection that can eventually lead to emotional unfaithfulness and finally to full-blown adultery.

*For more practical marriage advice, check out The Great Marriage Q&A Book. It's available in our online bookstore!

A Marathon in Tandem

The Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint. What’s the difference? Think about the running events in the Olympics as an example. The sprints are between 100 and 400 meters in length, little more than a quarter mile, once around the track. A marathon is 42.2 kilometers (26 miles plus 385 yards). Sprinters burst from the starting line and run at top speed a race that is measured in seconds. Marathoners pace themselves to run with concentration and endurance for two to three hours. Sprints require leg power; marathons require great lung power and capacity.

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As a Christian, you may feel like a sprinter at times, racing through a myriad of tasks, responsibilities, and deadlines. You say things like, “I just have to make it through this week,” or “If I can just hold it together until the kids are out of school.” But in reality, Christ has called us to remain faithful and obedient over the long haul, through the grueling marathon of a lifetime. You can see it in the following passages:

“Remain in my [Christ’s] love.” (John 15:9)

“By God’s grace, remain faithful.” (Acts 13:43)

“[Christ] will keep you strong right up to the end.” (1Corinthians 1:8)

“Let this encourage God’s holy people to endure persecution patiently and remain firm to the end, obeying his commands and trusting in Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12)

Christian marriage is a marathon in tandem. You and your spouse have linked hearts to serve God and get through life—with all its joys and pains—together. Your long-distance race isn’t about winning as individuals; it’s about helping each other go the distance and finish well. And aren’t you thrilled to have a running mate, a partner, and a helper?

You have probably discovered by now that the love that brought the two of you together—that passionate, fiery, romantic love—may be alright for a sprint, but it’s not enough to get you to the finish line. You need passion, fire, and romance, to be sure. But you also need persevering love, long-term concentration, dedication, patience, and endurance. Here are several important qualities of persevering love:

Total commitment.

The starting point for persevering love is an all-out commitment to each other. It’s the tough stance that says, “Our marriage is bigger than any issue. No matter what is arrayed against us, we will stand together. Neither of us will ever go through a trial alone. We will stay the course—not because we have to, not even because we promised to. Rather, we will hang in there because we care for each other more than anything in this world.”

Unconditional acceptance.

Persevering love says, “No matter how good or bad you look, no matter how much money you make or lose, no matter how smart or feeble-minded you are, I will still love you.” That’s the essence of our wedding vows—for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health. Unconditional acceptance chooses to continue loving even when life dumps on us a world of excuses for falling out of love.

Deep trust.

Persevering love is the product of deep trust between you and your spouse. Trust says, “I will

depend on you to guard my heart and my life, to fight beside me always.” You may need a lot of people to pull you through a crisis. But more than anyone on earth, husbands and wives should rely on each other. This level of trust grows richer over time and under the pressure of trials, as you each prove yourselves trustworthy to each other.

Tenacious endurance.

Every kind of trial in life—emotional burdens, financial difficulties, spiritual doubts, physical pain, relational stresses—presents a new opportunity for you and your spouse to hang on together. Commitment helps you stay connected to each other through trials; endurance is the determination to outlast the problems, to help each other get to the other side. Think of the intimacy and friendship that can develop in your relationship when both of you are committed to getting through every trial.

Abiding faith.

In order for your love to finish well through life’s pressures, it needs to be grounded in a sincere, abiding faith in the God who designed marriage. Any of us can stubbornly pursue a lifestyle that our culture deems important and live independent of God. Sometimes a severe trial moves us to let God have his way with us and to see what truly matters in life. We often don’t really appreciate the important role faith plays in our marriage until a crisis forces us to throw ourselves on God.

Diligent preparation.

Whenever you and your spouse find yourselves in a lull between the storms of life, take the opportunity to prepare for potential stormy weather ahead. The lull between the storms is the time to shore up your marriage. Work on a Bible study together. Take a second honeymoon—or third, or fourth. Read some good books on marriage enrichment and discuss them together. Attend a Christian marriage conference together. Seek out a Christian counselor and ask him or her for pointers on how to deepen your friendship for the long haul. The more you invest in your marriage between the storms, the better prepared you will be to endure the storms together—and even come through them stronger.

*For more helpful insights on how to connect with your spouse, check out Renewing Your Love: Devotions for Couples in our online bookstore.