Selected Excerpts from
Better Than Ever: Seven Secrets to A Great Marriage
By Drs. David and Jan
Stoop
Winning in Marriage
We have been
married for more than 50 years. We’ve certainly had our times of struggle, so
part of our learning about marriage comes from our own life experiences. At the
same time, much of what we’ve learned has come from getting into the trenches
with couples and helping them create the kind of marriage they have always
wanted. We have led marriage seminars and we have met several thousand couples
face-to-face at various stages of their marriages.
We are
counselors who are pro marriage. We love working with couples. We think of
ourselves as marriage warriors—we fight for marriages! It feels like we are winning when we can help a couple
restore their marriage.
We wish we
could win every time. When we begin working with a couple, we sometimes think
after listening to their story, it
shouldn’t be too hard to help them get back on a good track. But
surprisingly some of the “easy” couples choose divorce instead. Then there are
others who come, and we think, Wow, this
feels hopeless! But it isn’t, and they turn things around and restore their
marriages, rebuilding them into beautiful, loving relationships. What makes the difference?
We want to
help you answer that question by sharing the secrets we have learned about what
can make a bad marriage good and what can make a good marriage truly great.
You’ll note
as you read through the chapter titles that this isn’t a guide on how to fight
fair or how to communicate better—although you’ll find help on these commonly
written-about issues throughout the book. What we’ve tried to do is look at
some of the deeper principles that aren’t often talked about—ones that can
enrich any marriage. That’s why we refer to them as secrets.
Our hope and
prayer is that the secrets will get out! What we’ve written here is designed to
help you move your marriage in the right direction—to that place you dreamed
about on your wedding day. Pressures facing couples today have evolved from
when we married, but the winning principles remain the same. No matter the age
of a couple, or the stage of marriage, things can improve. Your marriage can be
better than ever.
Defining
a “Good” and “Bad” Marriage
Having worked professionally with
marriages for more than 30 years, we have found that bad marriages all tend to
look alike. When a couple comes in to our office for help, we’ve found there’s
not much variety in what they bring to the table—the destructive patterns and
problems are pretty much the same. These similarities have led to a rapid
increase in the research that helps explain what behaviors and attitudes make a
bad marriage a bad marriage. Consequently we can now identify what can make
a bad marriage better and what can make a good marriage great.
But when one tries to define the
“good” marriage, it is a different story. You will find a large variation in
opinions on what a “good” marriage looks like.
We’ve all
had the experience of spending time with another couple and marveling at the
fact that, despite the negative reactions they have with each other, they stay
together. They may argue a lot, or one spouse may seem to be very quiet and
uninvolved, or they seem to always be in therapy of some kind—yet they stay
together. Are these marriages good marriages? They don’t seem to be bad
marriages, but neither are they what we would call a good marriage.
Growth From
Conflict
One
of the major myths about how we envision great or even good marriages is the
assumption they are problem-free. Well, if not problem-free, at least we think
they are conflict-free.
Couples
seem to believe this from the beginning of marriage. As I talk with young
couples in premarital counseling sessions, many tell me of a common experience.
They have a big blow-up, and then they struggle with the thought that maybe
they shouldn’t get married. They say something like, “We had a really big
argument, and we still haven’t resolved it. We don’t know what to do. We’re
even wondering whether or not we’re really compatible. Maybe we shouldn’t even
be getting married.”
The
truth is that it is healthy for couples to have conflicts, especially in the
early days of their marriage. When two people begin to live together in
marriage, there are a lot of adjustments both of them have to make.
We
call the first 10 years of our own marriage The Great Tribulation. We struggled
with all kinds of issues, and we didn’t do a very good job of struggling. We
look back at that time and know the only thing that kept us together was the
belief we both had that there was no option of divorce—we were in this for the
long haul. To get our marriage on a growth path took some growing up for both
of us, and for Dave some important mentoring. In that process we learned that
the conflicts were what really pushed us forward.
Liking and
Loving Your Spouse
“Love is one of the most intense and
desirable of human emotions. People may lie, cheat, steal, and even kill in its
name—and wish to die when they lose it. Love can overwhelm anyone, at any age.”
These are the words of prominent Yale
University psychologist Robert Sternberg concerning what he calls the “mystery
of love.” Some people who have tried to study love end up saying it is just a
glob of intense emotional experiences that cannot be understood. Others have
tried to break it down into so many pieces that they end up explaining nothing.
Sternberg’s research provides us with a very workable model of love, one that
we will cover later in this chapter.
One of Sternberg’s most important insights
is that while love may draw a couple together, it is not what keeps a couple
together. What is far more important to a couple staying together in a
satisfying marriage is this: that husband and wife really like each other.
What’s the difference between liking
and loving? Perhaps one way to show the difference is to look at a couple who
aren’t married, but who are at very different places in their relationship.
Let’s say the man is thinking about a future with this woman, getting married
and having children together. He is forming a passionate loving attachment to
the woman. He is experiencing love.
But the woman is merely enjoying the company
of this man. She considers him a close friend. She looks forward to their times
together, has fun with him when they are together. She misses him when they are
apart, but she doesn’t feel any strong attraction to him as a sexual partner;
she just enjoys being with him and doing things together. She isn’t even
thinking about the possibility of marriage and children with this man.
They are obviously on different pages,
and at some point, the man is going to be deeply hurt in this relationship. He loves her while she likes him.
Research has shown that in great
marriages, the spouses really do like each other, and at the same time, they
really do love each other. A strong marriage combines all the feelings of the
man and woman in our illustration above. Liking each other is the foundation
for feeling close to each other and for feeling a sense of connection to each other,
whereas love goes beyond the sense of connection to the why of our
connectedness. In truth, in marriage, both form the foundation of a truly
loving relationship.
Married
to Ministry
In the early
years of our marriage, I (Dave) worked as a leader for a youth ministry. Before
starting, I went through an intensive two-week training program. The trainers
were all men who were legendary in this particular ministry. It was a privilege
to have them spend time working with us. Near the end of the two weeks, I
remember one of the leaders saying, “Men, you’re now married to the ministry!
This is your priority.”
I took that
statement very seriously, especially considering its source, and I determined
that maxim would launch me into an important new level of commitment to
ministry. It certainly seemed like that principle was a part of the leader’s
success. So I took it to heart. I can remember driving home to be reunited with
Jan with that thought echoing in my head. My guess is that every man there who
heard the statement took it as earnestly to heart as I did.
But I’m not
sure how many of them were naïve enough to arrive home and announce to their
wives, “Honey, I’m now married to the ministry.” Yes, that’s what I actually
did! If others did, they probably received the same response I did. A strange
look came over Jan’s face and she said, “Hmmm, I thought you were married to
me.” I don’t remember my response, but it didn’t change my attitude. It took a
number of years for me to get it right and undo the damage I had done to our
marriage by accepting and living out a wrong priority.
When I made
my announcement, in so many words I was telling Jan to move over, because she
was being replaced by my new love. Ministering was now No. 1. Obviously Jan wasn’t
pleased with my new commitment. Looking back, I can see that this led to a lot
of struggles and pain in the early years of our marriage, and that struggle
continued until I got the priority thing right. The priority scheme that placed
ministry as No. 1 wasn’t the way God designed us to live.
Fortunately
for our marriage, I had a pastor friend and mentor who about five years later
sat me down on a weekly basis over several months and showed me from Scripture
that after God, my wife was to be my earthly priority, followed by my family,
and then followed by my ministry. And
if I got that order mixed up, my ministry would suffer. “That,” he said, “was
really God’s plan.”
Seldom in
the church today will you hear such a direct statement like the one I heard during
my training. Saying it out loud may have been a product of that time period.
But there are still many men and women in ministry who believe their ministries
are to be the top priority in their lives, even before their spouses and their
families. You can probably achieve a “good enough” marriage this way, as long
as both spouses agree on those priorities. Some couples have grown comfortable
with a marriage that does not hold top priority. But our goal should be higher
than a good enough marriage. Furthermore, we believe there is a price to pay
for such choices; the relationship will suffer. And that isn’t God’s choice for
what is best for you and your spouse.
Moving
Forward in Marriage
Someone has
said that every relationship we have is either growing and moving forward, or
it is sliding backward and beginning to deteriorate. Relationships never stand
still for very long.
We’ve
certainly noticed that in our relationship. There were times when we not only
were sliding backwards; we almost slipped over the precipice. But something
always seemed to hold us and eventually we would get back on track. Sometimes
the movement forward wasn’t easy or pain free. In fact, in some of the darkest
times in our family, we pulled together and not only grew as individuals but we
also grew closer as a couple. We’re living proof that great marriages don’t
just happen; they always are the result of hard work. And as we look back, the
results made the work worth it all.
Better Than Ever: Seven Secrets to a Great Marriage
By Drs. David and Jan Stoop
Jordan House/Meredith
Books
Available December 2007
ISBN 978-0-696-23623-5,
224 pages, Hardcover
$19.95 U.S., $24.95 Canada
For review copies and
author interviews, contact Pamela McClure, McClure Muntsinger Public Relations,
615-595-8321, pamela@mmpublicrelations.com