Marriage Counseling

After more than 40 years as a pastoral counselor working with couples as they prepare for marriage and/or wrestle with marriage problems, the following story has repeated itself far too many times. 

A young couple comes to my office and we begin to prepare for their upcoming wedding with sessions of pre-marital counseling. When they enter my office, they sit virtually in same chair, and look lovingly into each other’s eyes during each session. When I ask them, “Where will you live after the wedding?” They respond, “Oh we don’t really have a place, but that’s okay. We’re in love.” I ask, “Do you have a job?” They respond, “Oh no, but that’s okay. We’re in love.”  “Do you have a car?” “No, but that’s okay. “We’re in love.” After the sessions of premarital counseling and a little bit more realistic idea of what will be required for marriage, they have a lovely wedding, great honeymoon, and their life together begins.

Far too often, about 8 years later, this same couple comes to see me about marriage counseling. They now have two children, a house, two cars, two jobs and are having pretty serious relationship problems. When they come into my office this time, they sit on opposite sides of the room and refuse to even look at each other during the first session. As we talk, they each tell me (and each other) in great detail everything that the other has done to wreck their individual lives, their children’s future, and their happy marriage. 

Does this sound familiar?

How is it that a wonderfully loving couple with such great aspirations about building a life together can wind up so far from the life they were hoping to build? Is it naivete? Is it because they lack a realistic vision of life and what it takes to make marriage work? I don’t think so. I have seen a number of young couples who are equally naïve and have no knowledge about what building a life together entails, who manage to make it work without losing sight of the love and positive energy that brought them together. 

So, what makes the difference?

To realistically answer that question, I think we must consider how people can enter into loving and committed relationships, how they can nurture and hold onto the love and positive energy that brought them together, and how they can avoid and overcome some of the very real struggles that often try to sabotage the building of a life together. 

First and foremost, we need to define just what genuine love and positive energy really is, and how and why it is so very important to any loving and committed relationship. For those of you who are in a marriage or other kind of committed relationship, let me ask you to take a few moments and write down why you love the person with whom you share this relationship.

If you are like most people, you will make a list of all of the wonderful qualities that person embodies for you. The list may be quite long or not so long, but it will likely include all of the very real and tangible things that person brings to you. 

Now, after you've made your list, let me ask you to look critically at it and decide whether what you wrote is the sum total of all that person is for you. Again, if you are like most people, it isn’t. In fact, if you are like most people, much of that list could be filled by a loyal and loving golden retriever. The problem with the list is that genuine love goes well beyond our words or any linguistic description we can ever articulate. This harkens back to what I said about spiritual awareness lifting us to a greater reality than we can imagine or express. 

When I have pushed couples a bit to try and get them to explain why they love each other, usually, one or both will get to a point of frustration and say something like, “Oh, I can’t explain it, but I just know it.” And, that is the correct explanation. You see, if we can recognize what love is on an intuitive level rather than just an cognitive, emotional or physical one (if we can’t explain it, but we just know it) then we have the ability to monitor how much the awareness of that love is in the forefront of our everyday life. We need to be able to monitor that awareness because in the everyday hustle and bustle of life, in the stresses of living, and in all the distracting and confusing messages we get about what is important in our culture, it is very easy for that awareness to be lost in the shuffle.

I am convinced that what causes the most damaging problems in a marriage or any kind of loving and committed relationship, is losing an awareness of the kind of love that can only be known but not explained, and consequently losing a strong spiritual connection which is an integral part of that love.    

When we add a loving spiritual connection to our physical and emotional connections, then the commitment to build a life together is empowered and can overcome any obstacle we encounter. A spiritual connection allows God to enter into and become the fundamental part of the bond of love, trust, and commitment that sharing life together demands. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any struggles or problems. God knows there are and will be both. But it does mean that no struggle or problem will be able to defeat that bond, because spiritual strength is a crucial part of the relationship. 

So, let's discuss how we come to understand, build and nurture this spiritual connection and bond through a Spiritual Marriage.

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