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The retirement phase. Poet Robert Browning penned these romantic sentiments to his wife, Elizabeth: "Come grow old with me, the best is yet to be." This era often brings out the deepest expressions of love or unspeakable loneliness.

As couples move through those phases, many of them begin to drift away from what a marriage is meant to be. What are some causes of this drift? Here are a few:

Dependency changes. During the dating days, one person is often attracted to the strengths of the other person, motivated by the longing for a protector or surrogate "parent" who'll provide loving care forever. The marriage contract becomes a "you be the strong one and I'll be the weak one" agreement.

But it usually doesn't stay that way. Things change. And often, that dynamic begins to feel burdensome to everyone. The "strong" partner gets tired of carrying the load, and the dependent mate begins to feel controlled or squelched.

When Melissa and I married, I saw myself as a rescuer; I was saving her from the "throes" of singleness. She seemed to need and appreciate my strength and wisdom. But after several years of seeing my vulnerability—and me seeing her competence more clearly—we arrived at a potential crisis point. And we both had to reassess the dynamics of our dependency.

Hurts accumulate. Another reason spouses drift is that we allow our hurts to build. As Christians we know—and probably had read at our wedding ceremony—the 1 Corinthians 13 passage that says, "love keeps no record of wrongs" (v. 5).

Reading that in a candlelight service is a lot easier than applying it to the wounds we've received from each other. Gashes of disappointment cut into our romantic expectations. Melissa really thought I'd never fail to call if I would be late for dinner and that I'd take the lead in our family's spiritual life. I really thought her sexual passion would be undaunted by motherhood. These are superficial abrasions that can be forgiven quietly. Yet the deeper hurts are harder to keep off the mental scorecard. If a couple isn't careful, they begin to compare scorecards at every new opportunity.

Circumstances stink. This drift is probably the most obvious. In our work with couples in crisis, Melissa and I are reminded frequently that "life ain't fair." When the "for better or for worse" vows are exchanged, nobody really considers the "for worse" part. We just think it's all going to be the "for better" part. Then most marriages are hit with some totally unfair event that smacks of "for worse."

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