A good marriage doesn’t just happen! It takes a solid set of decisions, a huge amount of skill, and enormous willpower. (Dr. Neil Clark Warren)

We came across a book that we’d like to share a few segments of with you which we found to be quite insightful. For additional insights you’ll need to read the rest of the book. The following is found in the book: The Triumphant Marriage… 100 Extremely Successful Couples Reveal Their Secrets by Dr. Neil Clark Warren:

For most people, the demands of marriage are mind-boggling. It requires all the energy you can give it and then asks for more. It involves a continual need for negotiation and compromise, for give and more give. Mind you, I’m a big believer in marriage. I’ve never seen happier, more deeply satisfied people than men and women who have made their marriages work. But neither have I met many people in highly successful marriages who got there without an enormous expenditure of energy and courage and determination.

There were times when they simply had to be “willful.” Virtually every successful marriage requires all kinds of willpower. Sometimes issues arise and the partners don’t have the necessary skills to manage them. They essentially have 2 choices: give up and run away, or get about the task of developing the required skills. Partners with will power always adopt the 2nd alternative. They wouldn’t think of giving up. They’re ready to work on the problem, ready to do whatever they must to keep their marriage healthy for a life time.

The foundation of willpower is a set of marital promises. It’s this set of promises that serves as the steel structure of every great marriage. Both partners need to know exactly what they originally promised to each other, and they need to be currently committed to those promises so that their willpower will always be stronger than any opposing force.

A good marriage doesn’t just happen! It takes a solid set of decisions, a huge amount of skill, and enormous willpower. I contend that people in extremely healthy marriages built those marriages just as you build a mammoth bridge or a skyscraper. They made their marriage triumphant because they simply wouldn’t settle for less. It doesn’t matter at all to them how much backbreaking work it requires; if it were necessary, they would do a thousand times more. Their willpower gives them this kind of toughness.

When I read the inventories of the 200 persons in our “advisory group” I was overwhelmed at the frequency with which they emphasized the critical importance of the commitment. One man said it succinctly: “Our lives are the sum total of our commitments. Commitment is the essence of what marriage is all about.” More than 90% of the respondents echoed his words.

Everywhere I turned in these inventories, I heard the same powerful opinion: “Marriage demands toughness, and toughness proceeds out of commitment. No marriage will ever be stronger than the commitment that serves as its infrastructure.”

We must understand though, that commitment alone is only part of the equation for a triumphant marriage. Commitment must lead to skill development. I’ve never studied a great marriage in which I viewed the partners as anything less than profoundly skillful. It’s crucial to recognize, though, that much of the time these skills were learned and developed after the marriage began. Often, the development of the skills came in response to a crisis or a series of crises.

Many persons in our group of 100 healthy marriages encountered enormous problems in their marriages, and in response to those problems, they learned marriage-saving skills. If those skills were learned unusually well, the crisis wasn’t only handled, but the marriage also took on a new level of strength and satisfaction that wouldn’t have been available if the crisis hadn’t emerged.

Marriage-saving skills became vital resources in building a great relationship. What are those skills that people must learn if their marriage is to survive and move toward greatness? They’re all the secrets I discuss in this book, such as creating a great vision with your lover, resolving conflicts before they dissolve the marriage, communicating with each other so that harmony rather than chaos characterizes the relationship, and building a mutually satisfactory sexual relationship. This book is really about learning and skill development.

Well in advance of skill development, though, is the matter of willpower. Hundreds of thousands of marriages fall apart before the necessary skills can be developed, because there is inadequate willpower. If a marriage relies forever on willpower, it will eventually become worn out and emaciated.

Nevertheless, a marriage short on will power is vulnerable to extinction when the road gets rocky and the challenges mount. Willpower and commitment are closely related. Persons tend to have a greater desire to do those things that they have promised to do. If they promised to cherish the other person under every kind of circumstance for as long as they live, and if this promise is current and vital, the likelihood that their spouse will be cherished in a difficult moment is substantially higher.

If I’m deeply aware of a particular promise I’ve made to you, I’ll try hard to keep it. For instance, if I promise to love you even when we’ve lost all our money, I’ll try to love you under the worst of economic conditions. If I find it difficult to love you under those circumstances, I’ll look for help in learning how to— because I’m acutely aware that I promised to love you. Promises strengthen my level of willfulness.

When I promise to do something, it maximizes the strength of my determination, and I pump up my willpower to its highest level. If I lack the skill to do what I promised to do, my high level of willpower will make me persevere. And this same willpower will make me search to find resources to increase my skill level. I will myself to love you and I will it so much that I will do anything to learn how to make it happen.

It’s our prayer that all of us will work to make our marriages the best they can be, because of Christ. As Dr Warren stated, it takes an abundance of willpower and the willingness to learn the necessary skills we lack to live a triumphant marriage as God wants us to have. It’s not just the strong starting of a marriage that’s important; it’s also the strength it takes to live out that marriage so we finish “the race” well! As we’re told in the Bible, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

In closing we’d like to share some additional thoughts that Neil Clark Warren also makes in his book that we pray will be lived out in all our lives. Dr. Warren talks in his book of the importance of continually reciting the vows we made to each other on our wedding day throughout our marriage so we don’t forget what we’ve promised each other and the Lord. He said, “the idea is to recite this vow over and over so that when the rocky times come, as they inevitably will, and when the flat places appear, as they inevitably will, the commitment to love, honor, and cherish will trigger new ideas in the brain about how to hold the marriage together.

Periodic rewrites of the commitment statement will make it even stronger. And new ways of living out the commitment —beyond simply verbalizing it— will wind its meaning around the bedrock of your soul. We’re all creatures of habit. Few habits are more crucial than those associated with living out the commitment vow. We want those habits to be so ‘bulldozer strong’ that they’ll literally overwhelm any opposition.

In the middle of a marital crisis, when an impulse darts across your brain that says ‘walk out, just get up and leave him,’ we want the rehearsed response to be ‘I love you, I’ll always love you, and I want to find a way to make this work with you.” When your brain flashes ‘gore her with some well-chosen words, make her feel as rotten about herself as you can,’ we want the steady old voice within to sound loud and strong, ‘I will find a way to cherish you even in this; this will not drive us apart.’

Such steadiness and maturity in the face of a momentary thunder-and-lightning storm is only possible if the habituated response is deeply rooted in your being through the long years of rehearsal, well before the rain starts pelting you.”

Don’t kid yourself. Great marriages are the result of back-breaking work! They simply do not come easily. Two people must be skillful and strong. They need to be tough! Strength and toughness come from reciting over and over: ” I will love you when times are good or bad. So help me God.” And to this we say a hearty, “AMEN!”

May God be glorified in your marriage,
Steve and Cindy Wright