Christian Marriage Advice-Should You Lower Your Expectations?
A commonly heard complaint from many of the couples we work with is that their married life is so radically different from their dating life. Boyfriends who used to open doors and pull out chairs have become husbands who no longer bother, and girlfriends who used to listen have become wives who nag. What you get is a marriage in danger and a lot of unhappy and unfulfilled spouses.
If this sounds at all familiar to you, I urge you to consider getting Christian marriage help. We have even put together a free DVD to help you! Together my husband Joel and I have been able to help over 10,000 couples overcome the problems plaguing their marriages. We would love to help you too.
We tend to accept this sea change in our marriages as a natural progression; we’re told that’s just the way it is. Conventional Christian marriage advice tells us that we are expecting too much out of our marriage, and we ought to just lower our expectations. Often the myth of married life as miserable is played up in sitcoms and on movie screens. But this is the wrong way to think about our marriage. You must never, ever lower your expectations for your relationship.
God didn’t give us the gift of matrimony so that we would be unhappy. God never once planned for our dating years to be wonderful and our married years to be miserable. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He never meant for our marriage to take on a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde life of its own. What we present to our partners is what we must continue living throughout our marriage. Joel and I believe that Christian marriage counseling should revolve around the fact that God loves us and wants us to love each other through happy marriages. This is why we should remember to honor our vows to love, honor, and cherish our mates today as we loved, honored, and cherished them before we got married. Through God’s strength and love, we can enjoy a marriage that is exciting and fulfilling for years after it first began.
