Three kinds of Environments in Marriage
Romantic Environment
An environment where we feel loved, happy, fulfilled and passionately in love with each other. We continuously find our spouse irresistible and are always motivated to spend time together. We wake up and go to sleep feeling loved by our spouse.
Two kinds of Love needed to build a romantic environment:
- Committed love – love that is faithful, sacrificial, unconditional and committed to serve one another
- Passionate & Romantic love – love that is romantic where you enjoy each other spiritually, emotionally & physically. Our heart always flutters for each other.
“Cherish each other till death do we part” – A vow we made before God. “Cherish” is an emotional word that means to make the other person feel special, loved and secure. The question is not whether we love our spouse, the most important question is whether our spouse feels our love for them. We must not only profess love but practice love. Love is a commitment to make your relationship romantic; it is a commitment to continuously make your spouse feel loved! The problem is that we marry the person we love, but stop loving the person we marry!
Romantic love isn’t a feeling couples will ultimately lose in marriage – it’s a feeling we can experience for life if we intentionally keep our marriage vows. A romantic atmosphere builds a strong immune system in the family and we can deal with problems differently. We are more patient and tolerable towards each other’s mistakes.
Romantic love will eventually burn out if the marriage relationship lacks a committed and loving companionship. Without romance and passion, marriage becomes pale and boring.
Sadly, research has found that more than forty percent of couples are doing practically nothing to keep the romantic fires burning. That is the reason why many married couples still feel lonely and isolated, and they begin to look outside the marriage for excitement.
Conflict Environment -War
An environment where we are filled with anxiety, stress and thus, experience frequent strife. Every little thing can trigger an argument. We love each other, but yet are disrespectful and rude to each other. Instead of making each other happy, we are doing things and saying things that cause pain and hurt to each other. We no longer look to our spouse to make us happy and fulfilled. This is mainly due to unresolved resentment and not learning to deal with the conflict effectively. Some people say, “Marriage is the only war where we sleep with our enemies.”
Flea vs. Dog Mentality in Marriage
- Flea looking for Dogs
In considering marriage, most people look for someone who can make them happy and who is able to satisfy and meet their needs. We call this the ‘flea mentality’.
Flea – a parasite that looks for a large animal where they can attach to and feed on their blood. The life of a flea is all about how you affect me, how you make me happy, how you meet my needs.
- Two fleas and no Dog
After marriage and when reality sets in, both spouses are convinced that the problem in the marriage lies with the other spouse. Party A feels cheated as their spouse (Party B) has changed from a dog into a flea. Instead of Party B meeting Party A’s needs, Party B has turned selfish and wants Party A to meet his/her needs instead.
Deeply wounded and fighting for survival, we begin to manipulate, control, cry, use anger and irritation, etc. to try to turn our spouse back into the dog we once knew.
- Looking for other Dogs
Instead of an interdependent relationship (mutually reliant on each other to meet each other’s emotional needs), we move on to an independent relationship. We stop meeting each other’s needs and also stop looking to each other to meet our emotional needs. Worse, we begin to look outside of marriage to get our emotional needs met. This is the beginning of emotional affairs which usually lead to full flow adulterous affairs.
- Power Bank
Instead of a “flea” mentality, true love should have a “power bank” mentality. This is where we seek to give life to each other and not demand life from each other. We learn how to depend on God to recharge ourselves.
Withdrawal Environment – Cold War
An environment with no argument, no strife, but also no love and intimacy. Sadly, many couples have windscreen wiper relationships. doing things together but never close. From outward appearance, the windscreen wipers seem united and well synchronized, cleaning the rain water from the windscreen. We raise our kids, attend church and cell groups, and do lots of activities together, but yet we are emotionally dead and not connected at all. Marriage is merely part of the routine of life.
We have long given up on the marriage and see no hope in the future of the relationship. We have accepted our fate of having married a flea due to poor discernment and choice. The relationship is filled with implosive anger, bitterness and resentment, and we try to avoid each other in order to prevent conflicts.
The initial purpose of marriage is to seek intimacy, hoping that the last person we see before we sleep and the first person we wake up to, is the one we love. But now we cannot even stand the sight of our spouse. We eventually raise an emotional wall and no longer want our spouse to meet any of our emotional needs. At the same time, we also do not want to meet our spouse’s emotional needs for we are convinced that our spouse is not worth the effort.
Points to Ponder:
- Which environment is my marriage now? Am I committed to make my marriage stay in the romantic environment?
- Did I practice what I profess? Did I intentionally make my spouse feel loved?