Wednesday November 28, 2018

 

Most couples these days choose to live together rather than get married. As a matter of fact, most couples who choose marriage will tell you that their biggest problems began the moment they decided to get married. Is this true? What is it that makes marriage more problematic than living together? The answer may not be obvious, but it is simply unfulfilled expectations.

 

Hopes and Dreams

 

Every single person who has ever chosen to get married entered into the relationship with a life full of hopes and dreams. Women since their childhood were filling out their wish list with the hopes and dreams of what their marriage would be like. How the man would treat her, how much time they would spend together, what his responsibilities would be, how many children they would have, how they would raise them, and even where they would vacation. Most women have it all planned out and they all entered the marriage full of hopes and dreams.

 

Men are no different, they too enter into marriage with hopes and dreams except   theirs are different in nature. The man hopes his wife will always look a certain way, that she will fulfill certain duties and responsibilities, take care of the kids, and take care of the house chores while he rests and spends his time watching sports. On top of this, he also expects that she will never complain about him. In reality, both men and women enter into marriage full of hopes and dreams and each one is expecting the other to fulfill every one of those hopes and dreams.

 

Expectations

 

The moment a man and a woman get married and say “I do” to each other, in that very instant all of their hopes and dreams become marital expectations. Now that they are officially married the woman expects her husband to fulfill all of her hopes and dreams and the man expects his wife to fulfill all of his hopes and dreams. The man says: now that you’re my wife, you’re supposed to cook for me, iron my clothes… I am expecting you to fulfill all my hopes and dreams. The same is true for the woman, she says: now that you are my husband you are supposed to wash the car, mow the lawn, and understand my feelings… I am expecting you to be the husband that I hoped and dreamed of. The problem is that no one truly knows all of our hopes and dreams and no one except God can fulfill all of our hopes and dreams.

 

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. – Ephesians 5:21 NIV

 

There is a better approach to marriage; instead of dumping all of your expectations on your spouse, you can choose to seek out of love for Christ, to fulfill your spouse’s hopes and dreams. That is what it means to submit to one another, to instead of choosing to convince, convict, or threaten your spouse into fulfilling your expectations, you choose instead out of love to fulfill your spouse’s hopes and dreams. This approach can be an extremely radical departure from your typical way of thinking; therefore in the next blog we will discuss this concept a bit more.

 

As long as you are living with unfulfilled expectations, there will always be tension in the relationship and a sense of a wasted life. But, when you choose to freely love your spouse, that is when you are truly opening the door to having all of your hopes and dreams fulfilled.