They are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matthew 19:6).
Marriage is designed to be an all exclusive club, a two-person arrangement that provides a safe place for each spouse’s soul.
There is no space for a third party to receive an equal share in a marriage, because that can easily disrupt the safety of the relationship. With a third party present, our love gets divided.
A part of our heart is unconsciously taken away from our spouse, where it belongs, and brought to an outside source.
For instance: a wife may tell her best friend how unhappy she is with her husband’s behavior without really letting her husband know how she feels.
A husband may be more invested in his parents than in his wife. A spouse makes her child a confidant and becomes closer to him/her than to her spouse.
Other forms of intrusion that compete for our love, and sometimes get between us and our spouse and diminish our relationship are:
• Work – a typical scenario is a workaholic husband whose wife has the impression that he loves his career more than her, outside hobbies and interests.
• Sports – during football season, nothing competes with the attention of the man of the house, church, financial involvements, television, internet (social media), illness, addictions, affairs.
Such situations as stipulated in the above scenarios does not necessarily arise out of bad intentions, but nevertheless betray the trust between the spouses and fracture the union that God had intended to develop in the marriage.
Such situations are painful and unjust, because a third party receives what is due to your spouse. Your spouse never hears from you what you tell others about him.
No one says you shouldn’t keep friends; we certainly do need close friends in whom we can confide and who can confide in us. But if that drives us away from our spouse, we certainly stepped over the line.
Equally, if you put yourself in the situation where a friend confides in you but not in her spouse, be aware of the dangers of that situation.
In spite of your good intentions and willingness to help, you may actually drive the couple apart if you don’t insist that your friend talks to her spouse first.
For love to grow in a marriage; there is a need to feel secure. When there is safety, we can come out of our isolation and self-centeredness and work together on our individual weaknesses.
But with a third party involved, there is not enough safety for these parts to emerge and the bond between the two spouses to grow stronger. Saying no to others; whether to people, things, or tasks is not easy.
Sometimes it is hard work, causes anxiety, and may upset others. But in order to say yes to your marriage, you must be able to say no to other things.
You simply do not have the time, resources, and energy to do everything you want and to please everyone around you.
If you do not learn to say no to others, you will eventually find out that you have been saying no to your marriage all the time. Sometimes, third parties intrude into our marriage because we have never learned to say no to other people.
For example, we don’t know how to turn down our boss or our customer who always asks for extra work time.
We don’t want to disappoint our church by refusing to join the third committee. We don’t want to hurt our elderly mother who feels so alone unless we spend every other evening together with her. We give everything for the people around us and people love us for this.
While the only one person who is disappointed – our own spouse, even when he seems to love our noble character, the willingness to sacrifice. But he suffers from the fact that we belong to everyone, not just to him.
If you find yourself in such a situation, you need to realise that your problem is not all those demanding people in your life but your desire for approval and possibly a great fear of losing love, coupled with the misconception that love is tied to being good.
And you’re probably less afraid of turning down your spouse than your boss, or your pastor, as if working on our relationship with these people would be more important than caring for your spouse.
Although you have responsibilities to the outside world and should be faithful in your job and active in your church, your top priority should be your spouse.
Marriage involves more than keeping the love between you and your spouse alive. It also means forsaking, or leaving behind other things. This is not easy.
Many newlyweds feel disheartened to find that they have to say no to so many things to maintain their marriage. Before they got married, they could take care of career, friends, and many other activities.
But now they are restricted by their marriage and they almost resent their partner for this. One thing to realise is that, marriage is not an extension of singleness, where you take your spouse along. It takes time to build the connection between the two of you, a lot of time is involved, and this time has to be taken away from others.
Marriage means forsaking some freedom in order to gain growth. You can’t have both at the same time.
If you don’t make forsaking a part of everyday life, you always run danger of adding the wrong thing (bad influences) to your marriage and subtracting the good (closeness and honesty) from it.