I realize when I give this advice some immediately rebel against it, because they fear their marriage will be pushed over the edge if they address the problem. When there is a severe crippling problem in a marriage that goes unchallenged, however, one spouse will suffer in more areas of life than just the marriage. (If this is your situation, you already know that to be true.) The problems in the marriage will affect the person’s health, job performance, and entire well-being, not to mention the marriage will never be all God intends it to be.

My boy’s can “fondly” remember the time we drove from our driveway heading to an undisclosed location on vacation. I decided in advance not to tell them where we were going, but to let it be a surprise. We were actually heading to St. Louis, but to complicate the situation, I decided to drive all side roads. We went through what seemed to be every back road between our house and the hotel. What should have been a four and half hour trip ended up being an eight-hour trip. The boys complained frequently, which I expected, but when the trip was over, they realized we had experienced a great time just being together.

When you worth is in held captive by an imperfect person, you will find yourself facing unmet expectations many times. While I believe strongly that each spouse has a responsibility to develop him or herself personally, the fact remains that your spouse will never totally meet all your needs.

Many men are relationally challenged. It’s not that we don’t want to have great marriages, but we are often weak when it comes to knowing how to build them. Often the problem is that we have the wrong ideas about the role each of us is to play in the marriage and it affects how we treat them. Men, see if any of these fit for how you’ve been relating to your wife.

Stop for just a minute and think of one couple whose marriage you would love your marriage to look like. Ask them if you can hang out with them, exchange emails with them, or if they will make themselves available to your marriage. Let their iron sharpen your iron.

If you were sitting in my office, however, I would attempt to draw this diagram on my dry erase board.  I hope you can get past the crude drawing to get to the intended meaning, because it really is important to understand in shaping a marriage.

Karen on our staff has been asking Cheryl to do a guest post for the Grace Community Church website for months and she finally agreed. She chose the title “Who me – a pastor’s wife?”. Let me say that I believe one of the most important jobs in the church is that of the pastor’s wife. I’m thankful I have such a good one. For more of my thoughts on Cheryl, click HERE or if you want to know how to honor a pastor’s wife, click HERE.

I’m personally excited about this ministry, having dealt with military family for years and having so many friends affected by deployments. Some families are facing their fourth and fifth deployments with the upcoming one. They are tired, frustrated, and stretched, while remaining amazingly faithful to their mission to keep us safe. God bless our soldiers and their families. I’m praying The Lantern Ministry offers some help.

I have tried to practice this principle in my marriage. Cheryl agrees with this principle also, but being the one better wired for dreaming, one year I gave Cheryl a set of large letters for her office that simply spelled the word DREAM. It serves as a reminder to her that we want to continue to dream together as a couple.

One very simple practice (at least in theory) that will dramatically improve the communication and working relationship between a couple, is when the man and woman begin to give credit for who the other person is, who they are wired to be. When the differences are understood and valued rather than criticized and battled, the marriage is strengthened rather than hindered by those differences.