So you’ve found the love of your life…or so you thought. It all seemed absolutely perfect in the beginning. You were head over heels in love; you couldn’t survive a day without seeing each other or speaking to each other; you could talk to each other for hours on nothing and everything. It was all beautiful…until the conflict began.
Do you and your proposed spouse frequently have major disagreements which lead you down the path to nowhere? Does every interaction with your fiancé or fiancée inevitably dissolve into an argument of some sort? It is normal in an authentic relationship to have differences in opinion; that’s one of the ways in which relationships grow and both parties get to understand each other better. However, relentless conflict in a relationship can be draining. It can make you doubt the very foundations of the relationship and whether or not you are really meant for each other. It can stop all progress and make you feel like you’re in a vicious cycle going nowhere. If that’s how you feel right now it may be that you need to stop, take a deep breath, and try to understand what’s really happening between the two of you.
Marriage is meant to be a pleasure, not a pain. If a relationship is rocky, marriage will not cure that malady so don’t be tempted to think that all your problems will disappear once you say ‘I do’. If anything, they will only intensify with the pressures of marriage. Just like pain in your body warns you that something is not quite right, pain in a relationship is an indicator and you need to stop and ask yourself what exactly the pain is indicating. So what can you do if pain has become a daily reality of your relationship?
Assess the weight of your differences
The first thing to assess is how significant your differences are. How serious are the triggers for your conflict? Are they significant things that border on what you believe about God and His involvement in your life; your life pursuits and what you believe you are on earth to accomplish; where and how you believe you should spend the rest of your life; or the moral lifestyle your partner chooses and espouses. These are all significant issues that will determine the course and quality of your life and if you and your proposed spouse disagree on these fundamentals, it should be cause for concern.
You are probably familiar with the illustration that if you want to fill up a container to capacity with rocks and sand, the large rocks which are the most significant must go in first, the little rocks and pebbles can go in next to fill the spaces between the large rocks, and lastly the sand can go in to fill whatever space is left. That’s the only way you can get it all in. If you start with the sand or the little rocks, you will never get the big, significant, important rocks in. So it is with marriage. When you take care of the fundamentals, the smaller issues will fall into place more easily.
What are the big, significant rocks in your life which are non-negotiable to you? Your relationship with God? Your vision for your life? Your integrity? If the relationship you are in is threatening any of these significant issues, then it is safe to say that it is probably not meant to be. If you proceed, you will have signed up for a lifetime of perpetual conflict because you will either have to let go of what matters most to you to keep the relationship or you will constantly be at loggerheads with your partner.
To illustrate this important point with my life, I could never have thrived in a marriage with a man who was not passionate about God because passion for God is so central to who I am. Similarly, I could never have been happily married to a man who did not support the call of God on my life, no matter how hard I tried. I knew I was meant to speak and help people from my teen years and that was one of the things that drew me to my husband; he is the same sort of person who is passionate about speaking and helping people. I support him and he supports me in what we believe God has called us to accomplish. I owe him a debt of gratitude for how supportive he has been over the years. You can compromise on the colour of carpet in your home or the brand of car you choose to buy because those are not earth-shattering issues. When you have to compromise on your core purpose, principles and values, no matter how much effort you put into making the relationship work, there will always be a lingering sense of dissatisfaction because the relationship betrays the essence of who you are.
Marriage difficulties always arise when people don’t take fundamental issues into consideration before they marry. They major on how much they love each other rather than what they can accomplish together. They push aside their convictions for the feelings and convenience of the moment and then they want to fix the problem after they are married. The time to fix the issue is before marriage because once you marry someone a higher law takes over that supersedes your happiness. That law is covenant and at that point you are committed to keeping your vows and making it work even if you realise that there might have been flaws in the way you chose your spouse. God will bless your commitment to a difficult marriage and help you navigate the situation and find resolution but how much better it is to make a careful decision from the start.
Are you and your fiancé or fiancée experiencing conflict on fundamental issues? If so, think twice.
Watch out for the second part of this article next week.
