You know, my marriage is strong. Like unbreakable strong.
And I know that there is an overall mindset that no marriage is unbreakable. Most people believe at least one of a married couple will cheat if they have the chance or one will leave because of this reason or that. Someone will inevitably fall out of love or ant to find their own happiness or ..... Or..... Most people just believe that it is pretty much inevitable if there is a chance or opportunity to cheat that it will happen. Look on Facebook or Tic Tok or snap chat or Instagram.... failing relationships and divorces abound all over. There are pages and pages of these people making videos about what a "Good Man" is or how to recognize a keeper or how to keep your relationship together or how to recognize if someone is going to leave..... ect. . . Ect. . . And why is that? Well, I am not sure but maybe these short social media videos and pleas for change are important.
When my wife decided to marry me, she decided to build her life around me and I decided to build my life around her.
It was a choice.
A choice that turned into a lifetime of wanting it not to be a choice . . .but wanting it to be a non-negotiable.
I have written of it before that finding your love of a lifetime should be the most deliberate endeavor you should ever take. It starts with knowing yourself and loving yourself deep down (Loving yourself first blog) to knowing what will make you happy to understanding that life will beat you down (we have a hard life not a hard marriage blog) to actually knowing how to make sure you have found the one (My advice on love post and Why I married her blog) to understanding your role in your marriage (marriage roles - an unpopular view blog) and the list goes on. A lot of my blog is about my marriage.
I think what it really boils down to is that my wife and I, once we really took the time . . . and I mean really took the time . . . to get to know each other and truly bond with each other, made a decisive and purposeful choice to build our lives and our happiness around each other and with each other.
No matter what. No matter who pushes from the outside. No matter what life threw at us. We have grown to understand that at the end of the day, we had each other and we would cast all that outside crap aside and keep the focus of what we wanted on us and our goals and our connection.
And this is vital to the success of a marriage.
My wife and I have had extreme trials to our marriage. Trials that can . . . and have . . . broken lots of other marriages. I lost my job, and she couldnt find one. We made a hard choice to leave the state we lived in and our family when we didn't want to. We had trails of infertility and then the difficult (almost fatal) births of our children which has affected our intimacy life permanently. We had to go through bankruptcy and money issues. Hell! She now makes more than me which is one of the common reasons women leave their marriages. Health issues have been a bane. You could say they were tests to our marriage. . . our commitment to each other. You could say that they were the thermometer of the strength of our relationship. No question though, many of these issues have and will break a marriage, but we are still going strong. And why is that?
It is because what she and I were building together was more to us than what was happening to us. We were (have been) putting so much into what we wanted of each other out of life that we were unwilling to give it up on those things. I call these times seasons. These hard times in our lives come and go. Some are temporary and some are permanent, but they all are on the outside and they try to get in and push you apart. Christians would call is the Devil trying to destroy.
The security of not being alone when taking on the world is the payoff here. That's it. That is what keeps us strong. You know? I mean, yes, we took the time to make sure our lives and our vision and our goals of what our lives will look like coincided. But once that was established, it is how you, as a couple, hit life with your vision in your minds. It is the idea that you are taking on the world together..... Not alone. Do you hold onto it making steps toward it with all you do or do you jump ship when it gets hard?
Obviously, a lot of couples jump ship.
I just find comfort and strength knowing that she is there.... That she will be there . . . that she will fight for me . . beside me. . when we are in hard seasons. Because there will be hard seasons. It is inevitable. It will happen. And you can either trudge through it alone or take it on with someone backing you. I rather take it on with someone I love with all my heart and trust to be right beside me.
It comes down to having that vision together and building it all together. How much you each make even if one makes considerably more or less doesn't matter because you are building it together. People trying to pit you against each other will fail because you are building it together. Life hits you in the gut with hard times and it doesn't matter because you are building together. What people say or do or try to break us will fail because we are building it together.
You get it? Take the time on the front end to find the person that will go through hell itself to take on the world because the vision you both are heading for and the bond you create that holds you together is worth more than anything that tries to pull you guys apart.
I truly believe the Bible is right in this matter. It doesn't even matter if you believe in God or Jesus. It's this idea of "one flesh" in the Bible that is right. When you marry a person, you become "one flesh" meaning that the two of you basically become one person with the same goals loyal to your life together and always looking to make each other happy as you would make yourself happy. Everything you do is to move yourselves forward with the strength you both have that will enhance and not take away from your union. You embrace each other and be intimate with each other and you connect with each other because you technically are literally representing being one person, neither one being separate from the other. Because nothing is more important than what you are building and your connection to drive the want to build. When you talk of your marriage, it becomes talking about the two of you as being one person.... us. And that is the foundation of it all, don't you think?
And that is why we are so committed, where the strength in or marriage comes from, and eternal love comes from. And that is what is missing in current times.
