Category: Tips

Our Best Advice For Making A Marriage Last

It’s easy to find good advice on how to make a marriage last. Anyone married long enough to weather a few storms should have valuable things to say. If you ask enough people or read enough material you will probably get a wide variety of answers. So much so, it may be difficult to choose what is the best advice to focus your attention on.

Over the years since we started this marriage ministry, I’ve thought about this idea a lot. I’ve wondered as we prepared for teaching a class, or meet with a couple for private coaching. Is there a single piece of advice that’s more important than anything else we share? Read more

When a Difficult Marriage is an Abusive Marriage

When the difficulty in the marriage is because of abusive behavior, personal safety must come before the marriage.

We love to encourage husbands and wives who struggle with difficult marriages. We believe commitment, hope, and perseverance go a long way in helping couples get past their difficult season. But when there’s abuse, we have to have a different conversation.

There is a serious issue of abuse that is facing far too many marriages today. This issue should never be ignored or overlooked, by the men and women who find themselves in an abusive relationship, nor by the rest of us who have a voice to speak out against it.

In this final post of this series on difficult marriage, I want to help men and women recognize when Difficult Marriage is an Abusive Marriage. Because, when this is the case, the approach to dealing with the marriage crisis must change.

When You Don’t Know How to Improve Your Difficult Marriage

You know you would like to have the marriage you have always dreamed of having but somewhere along the way the challenges of life have happened. And now you find yourself not knowing how to improve your difficult marriage.

In our previous post, Why Do You Settle For a Difficult Marriage, I gave a challenge for anyone who felt stuck with no intention of doing anything about the condition of their marriage. I talked about how marriage was designed by God to be a place of “One Flesh” unity and that God esteems marriage in such high regard that He even chose marriage to illustrate the relationship between Christ and the church.

As I mentioned in my challenge, “if marriage has been given the responsibility from God to represent what Christ’s relationship with us the Church should look like, shouldn’t we hold marriage to the same standard of honor and glory that God has already placed on it.”

But maybe you’re someone from my last post who answered yes to the question, “Are you in a marriage that could be better, but you just don’t know how to get there?” And so if this is you, I know you’re not looking for something that simply inspires you to do better. You are looking for some practical advice of what you can do. Read more

Why Would You Settle for a Difficult Marriage?

A difficult marriage is a hard thing to endure. The stress of bickering and division never seems to end. Even when there are moments of hope because love and peace are temporarily restored. That hope quickly fades as another day presents another challenge. Soon, husband and wife fall right back into their ruts of strife, anger, hurt, and confusion. And sadly too many men and women who have this type of marriage have no idea they don’t have to settle for it.

For 19 years I was willing to settle for a difficult marriage. For the most part I was always blind to how troubled my marriage was. I thought it was normal for couples to argue and have disagreements. So I thought what was going on in my marriage was just as normal as anyone else’s. I committed to marriage for life even if I didn’t like the condition of it. Read more

Is Your House Divided?

“If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” – Mark 3:25

Marriage is a wonderful gift from God. It’s the union of two unique individuals blending their lives together to become as the bible says, “one flesh.” This unity does not happen when husbands and wives become the same in every way possible. Couples establish and hold true unity in marriage by celebrating what they have in common. While at the same time learning to accept and embrace each other’s differences. Couples that strive to become “one flesh” know there is beauty and strength in both their similarities and in their differences.

But there is something seriously wrong when couples begin allowing their differences to create a divided home. Because when they accept and tolerate division in their relationship they open up the door for greater trouble in their marriage.

Secrets For a Great Marriage From a Former Unhappy Wife

This post is part of the Happy Wives Club Blog Tour which we are delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE!

One of the hardest things I have had to come to terms with in my life is the fact that I spent nineteen years of my marriage being an unhappy wife when all along I could have been a very happy wife. I’ve had to mourn those wasted years. There gone now and there is nothing I can do to get them back. That’s why I am so thankful the Lord is redeeming that time for us.

Though if I could, I would go back and talk to my former self. Because there are some things I would like for her to know. There are some things I would like to say to her to encourage her and reassure her. So I would say…. Read more

Get Passion Back into Your Marriage

You don’t have to settle for a marriage where you no longer feel passionate for each other. It doesn’t have to be that way. And you don’t have to dismiss a lack of passion in your marriage as something that passes with time. It is possible to keep the passion going for as long as you both shall live.

Janet and I are living proof that passion can be reborn in a marriage and it can be sustained for a lifetime. This week we will celebrate our thirty-first anniversary and we are probably more passionate for each other today than we ever have been, in spite of the fact that for many years we struggled to even like each other. And even if you have lost the passion you once had for each other, it is possible to Get Passion Back into Your Marriage.

Can You Balance Your Partnership and Friendship?

Every marriage should have a good balance of partnership and friendship. It is difficult and there are many couples who fail at it every day, but it is possible.

Marriage is the only relationship where we should have both partnership and friendship. Ordinarily, in any other relationship, it is considered unwise to mix the two. A business partnership that starts from friendship will usually hurt the friendship. And a partnership that develops into friendship can hurt the partnership. Unless everyone understands the difference and they are able to balance the two properly.

How do You Build a Great Friendship with Your Spouse

A few weeks ago I wrote a post, How Are You Two Related? where I started talking about how in order to have a good relationship we have to look at how well we relate to each other. Then on our last post, How Do You Relate? As Friends, Partners, Lovers, or All Three? I talked about how there are three major ways for us to relate to our spouse and the three types of love that go along with those ways of relating to each other.

Now on this post, I wanted to dig deeper on the subject of relating to each other as friends. But as I looked back at a previous post I did last year, Becoming Best Friends for Life, I felt there is really not that much I would say differently than I did then. So I thought the best thing to do here is to share an edited excerpt from that post.

Friendship in marriage is really important. It’s that place in marriage where two people are joined together in a way that they not only love each other, they really like each other.