Tracey and I sailed into marriage three decades ago with considerable wind at our backs. We had dated four years, joined a marriage class, worked through multiple marriage books, and overcome a series of potentially relationship-ending crises, including a death in the family.
All of that wasn’t enough to skirt the storm that nearly swamped us after our honeymoon.
Watching the older relationship of a colleague implode right as our own underwent its first major course correction was both distressing and scary. Distressing, because my friend did not forge an alternative when his wife’s graduate studies presented him with a false binary: to care for his mom in town or pursue his own wife in another city. Scary, because a shared faith, happy dispositions, and teaching jobs at the same Christian school had not proven protection enough for this couple against the arrows of a relentless Adversary.
Their relationship’s sad ending solidified Tracey’s and my determination to privilege our own marriage whatever the future held, to regularly reassess the strength of our bond even as I charged headfirst into the stressors of academia. We also embraced the interdependence God has woven into creation, seeking accountability with other like-minded couples.
Some of what we have learned—and imperfectly practice—through 30 years of marriage follows. Each observation has a pair that elaborates or qualifies its partner, a reminder that no one idea should be taken as absolute.
Family of Origin
- The separate pulls of “leave and cleave” and “honor your father and mother” invite us into a dynamic, lifelong tension. Cutting ties to parents to “self-actualize” or more easily pursue the American dream—however we define it—is as troubling as allowing parental opinion to dictate big decisions.
- The family-of-origin issues discussed in premarital counseling pop up throughout a long life together. Providing a safe space for spouses to work through new manifestations of the same old issues is a gift.
Change
- The advice I offered my younger sister years ago, recorded on a camcorder making the rounds at her wedding reception, is that the person you wed is not the one you wake to a year later: We are always being knit together, even after the womb. Committing to love an ever-evolving person requires flexibility, a willingness to accept unexpected turns not telegraphed by “in sickness and in health.”
- Outside my relationship with Christ, the facets of my identity are negotiable. Oneness presupposes a willingness to change to meet my spouse’s needs.
Conflict
- Silence is silver, not golden. The Book of Proverbs reminds us that wisdom knows how to bite its tongue, yes (10:19), but refusing ever to voice your perspective resembles humility only in the short run. Inviting dissent and resolving conflict is far preferable to buried, growing resentment or depression. Iron sharpens iron.
- In our dating years, Tracey taught me that timing matters when raising difficult issues. Waiting a few hours to work through a concern—instead of demanding an immediate tête-à-tête and resolution—encourages us to relinquish control, trust God with a potentially lengthy process, and cover the topic in prayer.
Community
- Everyone benefits from relational counsel, whatever their mental health, and therapists provide one among many viable options. Vulnerable small groups, reliable accountability partners, and close friends have blessed Tracey and me with meaningful support over the years.
- Discussing fiction with others offers a safe way to broach difficult relational issues without pointing fingers or giving away sensitive information. Book clubs and movie nights allow us to talk indirectly about fraught issues impacting our relationships, laying the groundwork for later dialogue.
Sex
- Scheduling sex can feel unromantic to a culture trained by television and film to expect mutually satisfactory, ecstatic encounters born of spontaneous feeling. We have found that regularly setting aside time for intimacy helps prepare us to give our best, to be attentive, patient, and flexible—whatever our current energy levels.
- Lovemaking characterized by pleasure and honor—rather than anxiety and shame—requires intentionality. Talking openly about sex every few months helps us reconfigure our efforts and expectations to meet one another’s changing needs as schedules and responsibilities fluctuate.
Walking
- Just as taking a walk stirs the creative juices for many facing writer’s block, an extended stroll can provide optimal conditions for problem-solving relational difficulties. Walking together requires finding a shared rhythm, a synchronicity that preserves freedom of movement. We’re less likely to feel trapped when in motion, sustaining engagement and discouraging flight.
- It took Tracey and me 20 years to realize we needed to set aside time to discuss logistical matters including scheduling, money, and parenting before our weekly date so they didn’t crop up while attempting to relax together. For the last decade, a midweek “pre-date” walk has protected those precious weekend hours.
Deepening
- When we were five years into marriage with our first baby on the way, God revealed that our busy lives had diverged too much into separate, parallel tracks. Setting aside a couple hours every Sunday afternoon for a picnic bookended by prayer, what we called “deepening,” invited regular vulnerability. It also laid the foundation for family time away from the demands of housekeeping once our girls arrived.
- Uncertain whether to specialize in Renaissance or Victorian literature in graduate school, I eventually chose the latter because Tracey also loved it. Two years later, my secondary field of interest became Irish fiction, following a shared trip to the Emerald Isle. More recently, we have jointly attended Christianity and literature conferences around the country. Fostering shared interests when possible provides another plank in a seaworthy vessel of marriage.
Adventure
- Romance grants unfamiliar pastimes a fresh plausibility when colored by our sweethearts’ enthusiasm, encouraging experimentation with sports, fine arts, games, shows, outdoor activities, and other ventures we might otherwise never attempt. A willingness to at least try—and maybe learn to appreciate—what our spouses love enriches our own experience and improves our understanding of what makes them tick.
- Trying new things together can reignite a spirit of adventure. Purchasing ocean kayaks during the COVID-19 lockdown, starting salsa and bachata lessons last year, and recently exploring a new corner of California (“Victorian” Ferndale, highly recommended!) have each renewed romantic passion.
Service
- Convinced that our marriage is our most important ministry, Tracey and I try to privilege time together. Before teaching a marriage course, providing premarital counseling, hosting a book club, scheduling a film series, or joining a Bible study, we reset our calendars to protect our relationship. If a crisis makes it clear we have missed the mark, we recalibrate.
- Service, like work, can offer us simple affirmation from the people we are helping. Such uncomplicated attention can eventually compete with the more complex, tempered affection of our spouse. Remembering to value the one who sees more facets of our character than those curated ones we show an eager, outside audience is a bulwark against split devotion and infidelity.
Knowledge of the Other
- The patience and kindness that open the apostle Paul’s famous definition of love (1 Cor. 13:4) require active listening and observation. Practicing patience is difficult if I am continually surprised by behavioral patterns I have failed to process. Similarly, it’s difficult to anticipate what our spouses will receive as kindness unless we have a rich understanding of their preferences.
- Shared experience teaches us much about our spouses’ character, but deciding at any point that we understand them completely prevents us from learning more. Finishing one another’s sentences is less romantic than rom-coms suggest, and it’s often a product of impatience. Better to allow space and time to be surprised by new revelations.
Personality Types
- Christ’s constancy (Heb 13:8) does not demand uniform righteousness in his followers. Instead it frees us to exercise the same principle in different ways. Individual expressions of virtues like self-control may differ radically while remaining in line with God’s will. Lacking telepathy, we will never know the many silent choices our spouses make to be faithful to God and keep marriages afloat.
- No one’s psyche can be distilled into the categories provided by a personality inventory like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Enneagram. We are far more than formulas. Such tools do, however, volunteer language and concepts useful for explaining our tendencies to a spouse, particularly when we believe the instrument has nailed some elusive truth about ourselves.
Forgiveness
- Keeping “no record of wrongs” (1 Cor. 13:5) becomes more plausible when we consider the biased, highly selective nature of memory. However hurtful a past injury, chances are we played some role in its appearance—which is an inconvenient truth when we cast ourselves as wholly innocent victims. Remembering that everyone processes differently the series of events culminating in a wrong can slow the rush to blame and can facilitate forgiveness.
- Forgiving our beloved can feel harder than loving our enemies; the proximity of a spouse salts the open wound. In rare circumstances, forgiveness may require space and time.
Self-Care
- The command to love others as we love ourselves implies a vital reciprocity between concern for self and kindness to others. One oft-overlooked benefit of self-care (sleep, exercise, diet, relaxation) is to delay the day our spouses must expend extra resources to care for us. Such self-discipline may even forestall the onset of neurodegenerative disease, a possibility for Tracey and me given our family histories.
- No matter how comfortably insular the two of us may become, developing and strengthening other friendships helps us care for ourselves. Humans were designed to be in community. When parental friendships built atop our kids’ camaraderie faded after we became empty nesters, Tracey and I not only bought more two-person board games but also fostered new friendships by hosting Wingspan game nights twice a month.
Trust
- The term gaslighting easily flies off young tongues with minimal relationship experience and no contextual awareness of the two films that birthed the concept. Adults overuse the idea too, behaving as though every lie were a malicious attempt to sabotage their mental health. The term’s popularity does, however, underscore an important truth: Trust grants power, power to nurture one another’s emotional well-being—or to poison it. To a great degree, we are our spouses’ keepers.
- When our partners can trust us to bear their burdens (Gal. 6:2) and pray for healing following their confession of sin (James 5:16), we provide a tangible reminder of Christ’s mercy. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning observed, “God’s possible is taught by His world’s loving.”
Dreams
- Fairness is a useful but imperfect ideal. Once the girls were old enough to express preferences, our family consistently took turns when selecting games, movies, restaurants, and weekend excursions. In marriage, however, a 50-50 mentality can be the death knell to peace and happiness. Demanding that everything be precisely fair invites endless tallying, predicated on the false assumption that two people will ever weigh the same action equally.
- Openness about our individual dreams for the future proves easier in the heydays of early romance than after years together have cut ruts in a path that feels inevitable. Seriously reconsidering each other’s long-term goals every few years may alter trajectories and lead to reallocated resources, but it also increases the likelihood of mutual fulfillment years later. Love is not self-seeking.
Extra
- At the time of this article’s publication, Tracey and I have actually been married 31 years, so I’ll leave you with an extra, succinct suggestion pulled from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door: “Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do.”
Paul Marchbanks is a professor of literature and film at California Polytechnic State University. His YouTube channel is “Digging in the Dirt.” He and Tracey teach a 10-week marriage course for local couples annually.
