Home > Marriage > Communication > Ready, Set, Grow!
Ready, Set, Grow!
It's good to solve problems and move on, but you can also strengthen your marriage in the process.
Carrie and Gary Oliver | posted 9/30/2008
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After years of struggling, we realized what we were doing wasn't working. After much prayer and many long conversations with each other and with friends, we discovered we'd developed a problem-focused marriage. We needed to spend less time going over the problems and more time talking about solutions.
Working toward solutions
The process of problem-solving together gave us hope, energy, and the ability to become more positive. Amazingly, the mere act of looking for solutions caused the size and number of our perceived problems to shrink. But while the solution-focused stage was an improvement, even it had some limitations. We were solving more problems and arguing less, but we weren't experiencing the depth and intensity of love God designed for marriage.
In the solution-focused stage, it's easy to find a solution and say, "Thank goodness, that's behind us," then quickly move on, pretending it never happened. There's no question that getting through a problem is good. But do marriages grow simply through solving problems, or is it more about solving them in ways that help our relationship grow? Is it possible to solve a problem without learning anything?
God doesn't want us merely to "get" through our problems. He wants us to "grow" through them. Jesus didn't die and rise again so we could be mere survivors. In the words of Romans 8:37, Jesus wants to help us "become more than conquerors" and experience "overwhelming victory" (NLT). He wants to do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" (Ephesians 3:20). He doesn't want us merely to survive the difficulties; he wants us to thrive in the midst of them.
We soon discovered not all problems are solvable. A study by the Gottman Institute found that only 31 percent of a couple's major continuing disagreements are about resolvable issues. The other 69 percent are about irresolvable "perpetual problems"—that is, fundamental differences in personalities or basic needs. All couples have to deal with issues that will never get resolved. The same research tells us that what really matters is not solving the perpetual problems, but the ways in which we talk about them.
For the first 10 years of our marriage we understood the value of growth and prayed for growth—but we weren't growth-focused. More than 25 years ago, as part of the research for his postgraduate degrees, Gary developed a marriage enrichment weekend called The Growing Marriage Seminar. It focused on teaching couples how to cultivate a growing, passionate, trusting, Christ-centered marriage. The motto was, "Building marriages rather than just mending them," and research showed it helped couples strengthen their marriages.
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