The Mechanics of Marriage

Marriage is hard. We all know this. Doing things that prioritize your marriage relationship above all others, including kids, is a must. Marriage is an opportunity for us to become more holy, and also experience the depth of love and passion that our Maker has for us.

Marriage can be a taste of Heaven on this side of eternity, or it can be a taste of hell. You get to choose what you make of your own marriage.

Since our separation last December, Sydnie and I have been working separately on becoming who the Lord wants us to be. It has honestly been a painful process, mostly because of my expectations and stanch principles that probably verge on legalism. Recently the Lord helped me accept that divorce is the path that Sydnie and I will likely walk, and while I don’t necessarily want this, accepting it is the only path forward.

Ironically, releasing Sydnie to Jesus is giving me the freedom I need in Christ to move foward with my life.

As I move forward into what the Lord has for me, I have been pondering on what I will do differently in the future marital relationship the Lord has for me.

When Sydnie and I first got married, I did not do a good job coming up with systems that develop intimacy and help us cling to each other even in the worst of times. The reality is our marriage died because of my poor leadership. Like many men, I got my identity from work. I would withdrawl any time there was an argument, and I developed a bad habbit of escaping necessary conversations by going to the gym or back to work. It wasn’t fair, or healthy. It also wasn’t even because of Sydnie, rather it was because of unresolved wounding from the past that I brought into our marriage.

The Lord used a program called Re:Generation to walk me through my prior woundings so that I could heal from them and understand how I became who I was. Re:Gen was a mirror for me to see exactly who I was…and honestly, it was ugly. As much as I would like to tell you that I’m a ‘fully healed man today’ the reality is we will always have wounding on this side of heaven. Now I am just more equipped to deal with wounding as it comes.

Okay, back to the main point of this article. Let’s talk about what went wrong.

What I observed in reflecting on the deterioration of my marriage over the last year is that I failed to establish standard operating procedures for the four key areas of relational intimacy in a marriage covenant:

• Financial
• Emotional
• Physical
• Spiritual

Financially, I ignored sound financial practice (like Financial Peace University) because I could always “just make more money.” I have made a LOT of money for someone my age. I have also LOST all of that money because I didn’t operate with wisdom. I should have listened to my brother-in-law, Steven Houston. Don’t repeat my mistake!!!
My financial recommendation: Life is so much better being debt free and having cash in the bank. For those of you who need a financial system that actually works, I highly recommend Evenlope Bank and regular meetings with your spouse to discuss financial objectives and to maintain alignment. If you have never done this, expect to meet a lot while you are setting systems up and eventually everything will run like clockwork.

Emotionally, I was closed off because of prior wounding. My wife didn’t get the access to my heart that she deserved because of a past relationship. Not fair to her or our marriage. The Lord allowed me to heal emotionally so I can actually be available for my spouse. Might have swung to far on the pedulum because of how much I find myself crying now LOL.
My emotional recommendation: play board games, find a hobby, talk, laugh,or cry together. Develop inside jokes, make a bucketlist, stay up to late, be ridiculous together. Seriously, you only get one shot at life. If you’re doing it with someone you love, then do it ridiculously!

Physically, I was incredibly selfish when it came to our sex life. Sydnie asked me to read books to get to know her body early on in our marriage, and I couldn’t be bothered because I thought I was ‘good enough’. Wow. What a joke I was. Praise God for getting to be humbled because over the course of the last year I finally got the education to be a worthy lover for my spouse.
My physical recommendation: READ BOOKS, MEN. Educated sex is so much better than I could have imagined. Trust me when I say you won’t be disappointed. Sorry if that’s TMI. Just being real.

Spiritually, I heard the Lord call me into the secret place for years and did nothing. It’s really humbling to say that out loud. “I heard God calling me and I ignored him.” OOF. What an idiot.
Here’s the good news, the Lord was totally willing to let me wreck myself in order to reach the bottom. He was with me the entire time from peak to valley.
My spiritual recommendation: Don’t wait until life comes crumbling down to become an apprentice of Jesus. He wants a relationship with you and the great part is you don’t have to worry about bringing anything other than your brokenness to the relationship.

Your spouse deserves the best version of you. If you’re thinking to yourself that your spouse is the only one who needs to change, I would like to share a thought with you: There is no such thing as ‘working on your marriage.’ there is only ‘working on yourself.’ So start there.

Which mechanics of marriage do you need to work on?

See you in the comments!