3 Ways to Protect Your Marriage From Fatal Blows, Part 1

When it comes to marriage, you would be hard pressed to find someone more optimistic than me. But recently, I’ve come to a hard realization that may be robbing my optimism, but is also strengthening my resolve to help couples focus on their marriage WAY before they enter into crisis mode.

I’ve worked with married couples since 2001. Again, my heart and life is to help couples be proactive. But most of the people who contact me directly, do so because they are on the verge of divorce. As soon as they start talking, my heart and head start internally praying, “Oh God, please give me the words to help save this marriage.” One of the things I almost always suggest is a Marriage Intensive. If you aren’t familiar with Marriage Intensives, they are basically two to four days of in-depth counseling for couples in crisis. Most couples show up with divorce papers in hand, and three years later, 86 percent of the couples are together and healthier than ever. But here is the problem, while the intensives have a great success rate, for the last 10 years, I have a zero percent success rate of convincing anyone to go. I’m not the only one. One organization that provides Marriage Intensives, report they have an 80 percent hang-up rate when people call to inquire about what the Intensives involve. I understand why someone wouldn’t want to go, but really? Isn’t your life, your children’s lives worth a two- to four-day investment?

Now, here’s the hard realization I mentioned earlier: For some married couples, they seek help too late. One or both of them have been delivering relational blows for so long, that it has fatally wounded their marriage. What starts off as frustration, evolves into hurtful words and behavior that evolves into hatred and eventually into something worse, complete and utter apathy. The hurtful behavior can range from working too much to infidelity to simply being unavailable emotionally. I equate this to someone who neglects and abuses their body and, as a result, contracts a fatal, incurable disease. Does God still love them? Absolutely. Is it too late to save them? For many, yes. While I will always do everything possible to help a couple in crisis, the sad truth is that some are simply not going to make it.

Here’s the sadder yet hopeful truth all wrapped into one: For most couples, it doesn’t have to end like this. If they had focused on keeping their marriage healthy, before it got sick, they wouldn’t find themselves in so much pain. But most of us weren’t taught how to focus on our marriage. So in part two of this post, I’m going suggest three ways to protect our marriages from fatal blows, three things that EVERY couple needs to do. But until then, what do you think protects a marriage from being fatally wounded?

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