Technorati Tags: Christian Marriage Counseling, Marriage Communication

How strong are your interests in common?

What sports and amusements do you enjoy together?

We start with this, not because fun is too important, but because it is what so often first brings the young couple together. A boy and a girl find that they like to swim, play tennis, and go to shows together. This is a fine start, and some of these activities can be enjoyed together for many years. But physical activities can do no more than to give the initial push.

As people grow older their physical energies diminish. They become interested in other things. And in any case, marriages are not mainly recreation. Therefore it is essential that the couple consider other interests which will hold up better under the long pull.

What intellectual or cultural interests do you have, such as music, drama, literature, painting, or history?

This list may seem to be of possible interest only to highbrow intellectuals. Yet many people of little formal schooling have developed considerable interest in, and taste for good music and art. Other people have less pretentious hobbies, such as woodworking, dog breeding or clay modeling.

Every family should have at least one amateur photographer. Some of these interests may be related to a vocation.

Frank had a very real interest in his garage work. The girl whom he finally married developed a very profitable, but no less real interest in raising chickens.

It is not necessary that both husband and wife have the same interests. In some ways, their relationships will be more fruitful if one specializes in one thing and the other in another. Then by sharing, they can both have a broader development.

It is important that they do have interests. The person who has interests is more interesting as a person. The wife who spends considerable time in her garden and really tries to do a good job, may prove far more attractive to her husband than if she spent the time in a salon.

Furthermore, interests which seem quite divergent can often be shared in most valuable ways. Cathy was a research physician and Alex a sculptor and painter. When she wrote a book on a technical medical subject, he illustrated it.

One need not be a specialist in the field of the other. A couple needs only interests to share, and interest enough in what the other is doing to make possible the sharing. A young couple will rarely know in advance just what and how their interests may later develop. They should be able to tell, however, the extent to which either or both is alive to any part of life which is beyond themselves.

But if you discover that one or both of you has no significant interests, what then? Your answer will depend upon what you want from each other. Some men, often because they feel inferior, want a wife who will be little more than an appendage to the household and otherwise be as colorless as possible.

Likewise, some wives will want husbands who will provide reasonably well financially, but who otherwise will trouble them as little as possible. We shall not here pass judgment upon such persons. We shall say only that if this is what either or both of you want, you should both know it and face fully what it means.

But if you want your marriage to be a rich companionship, real interests are essential. Marry a person without hair, teeth, fingernails, or a nose, but not one without interests.

Technorati Tags: common interests, Marriage Communication, relationships

As mentioned in the previous post, the failure of romantic love to continue doesn’t mean that there is something the matter with a particular marriage, or marriage in general. It means that selecting life partners on the basis of this supposed love feeling alone just isn’t enough. If a marriage is to succeed, we must exchange these fancies for facts.

In giving advice for marriage let us now consider what some of these facts are.

Advice for Marriage Fact One: Love is not any more strange and mysterious than many other human experiences. Actually there does exist a real and growing body of scientific knowledge about it. We know a great deal about the nature of love, why it hits the way it does, and why it can or cannot stand up under the long pull of marriage.

Anything is mysterious; the rising and setting of the sun, the circulation of the blood, or changes in the weather – all are strange and mysterious to those who lack scientific knowledge about them. Many who drive cars have only the slightest idea of what goes on under the hood, or what to do if the car refuses to start. Why people suddenly become ill, or are suddenly hit by a pain at the back of the neck, may be as complete mysteries as the sudden coming of love.

But as our knowledge grows, all such experiences become increasingly understandable. In love as in health, you can tell little by the way you feel. The man in terrible pain may have only simple indigestion which will cure itself, while the man who feels nothing wrong may suddenly drop dead of heart failure. Those who feel most sure of their love are often the poorest marriage risks. Having a healthy marriage, like having a healthy body, calls for the best scientific knowledge we can get.

Advice for Marriage Fact Two: There is not just one, but there are many forms of love. The man who is not well may use just one word to describe how he feels. He may say that he feels sick. The medically trained man knows that although many forms of illness may feel alike, actually they represent many different kinds of diseases which are quite different from each other.

So it is with love. There are many forms of it. Those in love may feel quite similar to those whose love is of a very different type. Actually, however, one form of love may be quite unlike another.

Some forms of love are essential to successful marriage, or even to successful living. Other kinds of love are forms of selfishness. For example, we say that we love oranges. The orange would not think so. We destroy it for our pleasure, and then throw what is left in the garbage. Sometimes we love people in the same way – even our own children. We get what we want out of them, often regardless of their wishes or best interests.

Sometimes young people love and want to marry, mainly because they want to get something out of the other, not because they desire his good. Yet this selfish kind of love may look and feel just like any other kind. Not all forms of love are good and sound. Some forms should be warning signals, rather than bases for marriage. The important question is not, “Do I love him enough to marry him?” It is rather, do we feel the kind of love toward each other upon which a marriage can successfully be built?

Advice for Marriage Fact Three: The richest, deepest, and most permanent forms of love are those which we build over the years. So you are in love. You feel a warm, romantic glow toward each other which you do not feel toward anyone else. Grand. The love which you feel toward each other may be honest and true. If you marry, it will give you a good start.

But the love which will make your marriage most worth-while, which will not only endure but grow through the years, is not this romantic kind. It is the richer, deeper kind which comes from Having with another who is in a true sense a life partner; one with whom you have in common the basic purpose of building a family together; someone who is going your way. Only such a love can really meet your needs. Only such a love can weld your marriage together so that it can easily withstand the storms and stresses which pull against it.

The romantic form of love may be able to give you some thrilling experiences for a few weeks, or even a few years. Only this richer form of love can make the latter part of your life richer, and in a sense, more romantic than were the first years. And this love is not anything you can fall into. It must be built.

Read some of our other posts for more advice for marriage.

Technorati Tags: advice for marriage, Christian Marriage Counseling, Marriage Communication