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.

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 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.

It didn’t take long for Cheryl and I to realize that one of us avoids conflict and one of us actually enjoys it. If you read my blog at all you can possibly guess which one of the two I am. As a result, of this in our personalities, if Cheryl and I had a disagreement, she would quickly disappear to the bedroom. She always went to be early on days we had an argument. (Yes, pastors have those also.)

The premise of this principle is simple. If something is bothering you now, even if it is a small matter, it will only bother you worse if you don’t deal with it. You can choose to let it go and live with it or encourage a change with the area of concern, but you must deal with it before it becomes a major problem.