Don't put me down
0 comments | Posted by Steven Layson on 02 Nov 2008 in From Steve's Study :: Marriage
Marriage is under siege in our society. Because of the high divorce rate, many people nowadays are very cynical about this beautiful institution, and are putting off marriage altogether. The question needs to be asked, what makes a good marriage? How can we make our marriages last? Sadly, again, there are many who reject anything the Bible might say on the matter. Perhaps the following research is helpful.
In order to uncover the processes that destroy unions, marital researchers study couples over the course of years, and even decades, and retrace the star-crossed steps of those who have split up back to their wedding day. What they are discovering is unsettling. None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple’s durability actually does: not how in love a newlywed couple say they are; how much affection they exchange; how much they fight or what they fight about. In fact, couples who will endure and those who won’t look remarkably similar in the early days.
Yet when two American psychologists studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage, they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationships. Among couples who would ultimately stay together, 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were putdowns. Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. That gap magnified over the following decade, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as happy couples. “Hostile putdowns act as cancerous cells that, if unchecked, erode the relationship over time,” they said. “In the end, relentless unremitting negativity takes control and the couple can’t get through a week without major blowups.”
Perhaps the bible�s teaching on marriage is not so irrelevant after all! Peter encourages wives to live with purity, reverence and gentleness towards their husband, while husbands are challenged to be considerate and respectful towards their wives. If only we would take on the Bible’s blueprint for marriage, our relationships would be so much stronger and more in line with the way God intended them to be.
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