“Even if we have an unbending commitment to our mate, most of us are blind to how we lose our marriages by slow erosion if we don’t keep replenishing the soil” (William Doherty).

One of the missions of this ministry is to get the message out (to as many people as we can) of the importance of being pro-active in our marriages. We most often maintain a romantic and vital relationship of love in pro-active ways before we marry each other. But for some reason, after the wedding (and especially when we start to have children) we become oblivious to the importance of making the effort to maintain that relationship with each other. We allow the busy-ness of life to come between us and drift us apart.

For this marriage message we’d like to share some things that came from an article written in The Connecticut Family Matters by Marcia Segelstein entitled: Intentional Marriage. In it she quotes William Doherty who’s a professor and the director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota and the author of numerous books including Take Back Your Marriage (from which most of the quotes are taken).

We’re going to share with you several quotes that we hope you’ll utilize in strengthening your own marriage (by discussing them with each other—making that “intentional time”) and/or perhaps sharing in a group setting to help other marriages. They are:

• “The core social and personal challenge of our time is how to make loving, permanent marriage work for ourselves and our children. I fear that no social program, no educational achievement program, no job program, no anti crime program, and no amount of psychotherapy and Prozac will solve our society’s problems unless we figure out how men and women can sustain permanent bonds that are good for them, their children and their communities.”

• “Part of the problem is that the consumer culture in which we live has affected our attitudes about marriage. We expect our mates to fill needs for us, and to bring us happiness and fulfillment. We’ve internalized the notion that it’s okay—and even psychologically healthy—to be looking out for number one even within the context of marriage.”

• “We ask ourselves during stressful times, or boring times, or just from time to time whether we’re getting what we should from our marriage. Our culture teaches us that we are all entitled to an exciting marriage and great sex life; if we don’t get both, we are apt to feel deprived.”

• What used to be seen as human weakness of the flesh has become a personal entitlement. Steadfastness and self-sacrifice aren’t in this picture of therapeutic consumption. When the marriage relationship becomes psychologically painful or stunts our growth, there are plenty of therapists around to serve as midwives for a divorce.”

• Doherty believes that the two key ingredients for a successful marriage are commitment and intentionality. Commitment may sound obvious and clear-cut. But in his years of therapy, Doherty has come to recognize two distinct kinds of commitment couples make. One is what he calls “commitment-as-long-as.” It means staying together, “not as long as we both shall live, but as long as things are working out for me.”

• The other kind is what Doherty calls “commitment-no-matter-what.” He describes it as “the long view of marriage in which you don’t balance the ledgers every month to see if you are getting an adequate return on your investment. You’re here to stay.” [Note: This is also what Covenantal Marriage is all about—the kind of marriage that God intended from the beginning.]

This long-term kind of commitment is essential, according to Doherty, but can lead to stale marriages if not accompanied by intentionality.

• By intentionality, Doherty means making one’s marriage a high priority. During courtship, a couple’s relationship is front and center, as he puts it. After marriage, other things often take priority: careers and children, to name the most common. Having an intentional marriage means being conscious about maintaining a connection through, among other things, “a reservoir of marital rituals of connection and intimacy.”

• The main way to resist the forces that pull us apart—the natural drift of marriage over time and the insidious pull of the consumer culture—is to be a couple who carefully cultivates commitment and ways to connect over the years. Simply stated, the intentional couple thinks about their relationship, plans for their relationship, and acts for their relationship, mostly in simple, everyday ways and occasionally in big, splashy ways.

• Doherty gave an example of a simple ritual that he and his wife developed during their child-rearing years. Every evening after dinner, they’d have coffee together — without children present. Their children knew they had to leave their parents alone for these few minutes. Years later Doherty asked his grown daughter what she thought of that ritual as a child. She told him that it made her feel safe because she knew it meant that her parents liked each other.

• Doherty believes there’s a tendency for parents to think that it’s okay to sacrifice their relationship for the children. There’s no question that having children involves sacrifices, but, as Doherty told me, “Sacrificing your marriage for the sake of your children doesn’t help anybody.”

• If marital counseling is needed, Doherty advises that this is a time when being a good consumer is important. Selecting the right therapist can make all the difference. He suggests talking to people who can make a recommendation based on successful personal experience. He recommends asking questions and making it clear that you want to hold onto your marriage and make it better.

We hope you’ll seriously consider what’s been said in this message about “The Intentional Marriage” and act upon its advice in your own marital relationship. To read the article in its entirety, you can do so by entering the following information in your web browser. It will take you directly to the article archived at the Smart Marriages web site: http://listarchives.his.com/smartmarriages/smartmarriages.0306/msg00020.html

In closing, we’d like to share with you the prayer of our hearts for your marriage which we found quoted in The Message by Eugene Peterson paraphrasing the verses in the Bible found in Philippians 1:9-11. It reads:

“So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.“

God Bless!
Steve and Cindy Wright