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Laughability: There is a contented joy between reconciled people, with no unresolved sin dividing them. They can laugh in conjugal happiness because there is no masked tension in their relationship. They enjoy unguarded connectivity.
Tender care: The way they look at each other and touch each other reveals a physical fondness within the marriage covenant. There is a natural attraction to be physical in simple ways like hand-holding and touching. It’s a willing vulnerability that releases them to be free with each other.
One-flesh body: The spouses make active eye contact, revealing their respect and affection for the other person. There is physical comfort, as opposed to tightness and tenseness or always withdrawing from each other.
These are a few of the things you can perceive from couples in love. There is an authentic affection for the other person that they cannot disguise. It is a beautiful thing to see this type of symbiotic interaction between a husband and his wife. When these relational benefits are not present, there will be a distance in their union—even when they are close to each other. Relational laughter, tender affection, and a divided one-flesh will be discernible. A broken marriage does not usually start with catastrophic sins but subtle shifts, unmet desires, and the slow creep of sinful patterns that remain unaddressed. The mind map for this chapter lays out a typical decline in marriage—from desire to distance. What often begins as a normal desire becomes a wedge. What was once a longing becomes a source of suffering. What started as a unified relationship became a distant partnership. Though the story behind the map is fictional, the process is all too familiar.
Step 1: Desire: Division in a marriage always begins with an unmet desire. It does not have to be a sinful desire; it is merely an unfulfilled hope. A spouse wants something. Typically, it is a desire that runs along the lines of respect, honor, love, appreciation, time, proactivity, or acceptance. None of these things are necessarily wrong. In a perfect world, you will find all of them in our “marriage benefit package.” There is nothing from this list that will not be in heaven. The problem for us is that we are not in heaven, which means we must hold these good desires loosely, not that we should let go of them. However, we must pay careful attention to how they can become contorted and controlling. In a world where sin abounds, any good thing is a hair’s breadth from becoming an enemy, always on the prowl, seeking how to devour all the good the Lord intends (1 Peter 5:8; 2 Corinthians 11:14).
Step 2: Expectation: If we don’t steward our desires correctly, they will become controlling expectations. Typically, we only steward our desires in a one-sided fashion: we expect others to meet them. We resist any potential of the Lord withholding what we want. Not fully factoring in the Lord interrupting what we want is a huge mistake. It is a myopic understanding of His plans and how He accomplishes His purposes in our lives and marriages. If we do not press sovereignty into God’s equation for the betterment of our relationships, we can be set up for disappointment. Not having a sound theology of sovereignty and suffering is a deeper theological understanding of merely not getting our surface-level desires met. Typically, we don’t factor in the Lord’s allowance of adverse possibilities. The Lord sees what we cannot and will write suffering into our stories for our good (Romans 8:28).
Step 3: Disappointment: Without the careful stewardship of unmet desires, accompanied by unmet expectations, we are not far from being disappointed with the people we anticipated to give us what we wanted. Let me reiterate that these things do not have to be wrong. They only become bad when our hearts turn angry as a response to not getting what we want. Too many people get lost at this point. What they wanted became so controlling and expected that they would not conceive of a scenario where not getting these things could be right. Without a sound gospel orientation, they will never see the lifting of their relational fog. There are scores of situations in the Bible where the Lord was actively causing bad things to happen because He could see the bigger picture. He was working His plan of redemption in the lives of many people, which is always the rub. The selfish person can only think of themselves.
And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:32-38)
Step 4: Angry: When anger over not getting what you want enters the relationship, there will be division. Sinful anger, regardless of how it manifests, will disrupt relational shalom. The oddity about anger is that it can become a fixture in a person’s heart years before the other person is aware of the problem. When I ask a struggling couple about the beginning of their problems, they typically give two radically different starting times. For example, the wife will talk about the onset of disappointment early in the marriage, if not before. The husband will say he noticed things going south at the ten-year mark of a twenty-year marriage. The early stages of anger for her looked like disappointment, discouragement, frustration, impatience, negativity, and dismissiveness. These marriage killers can be missed or marginalized if the couple is not intentional about their sanctification.
Step 5: Unforgiveness: Regardless of the type of anger (James 2:10), if the couple does not deal with it biblically, they will mishandle this pivotal point in their union. Forgiveness and unforgiveness are a watershed moment that will send their marriage in one of two radically different directions. Because sin typically slithers into the union unbeknownst to one of the partners, the chance of reconciliation is slim. The hurt spouse will begin harboring resentment because of the unmet desire while accumulating many more grievances. There is a self-defeating interplay here. One spouse is hurt, and the other spouse is oblivious. Maybe the hurt spouse tried to speak up, but it fell on deaf ears. There are several ineffective ways this can play out, but the result is always the same. Unforgiveness is a cancer that will overcome any marriage. At that point, nothing can be done until the accumulative effect of the ongoing hurt brings both spouses to the place of taking action.
Step 6: Bitterness: If the sad storyline continues, it will turn to bitterness, which is unrepented, undealt with anger that has gone from bad to worse. The bad part is anger; the worst part is bitterness. The spouse is now bitter, and this is self-justified, entitled anger rooted deep in the heart. There is nothing the other spouse can do that will make the bitter spouse happy. It is like a person sitting in the bush with a rifle, cocked and loaded, waiting for its prey. She is angry, bitter, and cynical while holding the ultimate trump card: her self-righteous unforgiveness, which always sanitizes anything she may say or do, whether it’s righteous or not. At this juncture, the guy might get a clue, but instead of humble acknowledgment of a problem and a desire for a redemptive solution, he becomes her combatant.
Step 7: Disrespect: To play the disrespect card in this scenario creates a standoff. Two selfish and angry people are playing chicken in the middle of the road, waiting for the other person to make the first move. They both own the right to an entitled desire, and they will not let go of their rightness. Ironically, both of them are right—to a degree, and both of them are wrong. Guess where they both land on the “I am right and you are wrong” scale? When selfish people can find leverage in the marriage, they will take it and not let up on it no matter how much you talk about the other-centered call the Lord places on their lives. Until the Lord and His fame matter more than their entitlements, they will never relinquish the stranglehold they have on each other. They will die fighting for their rights before they will die to themselves.
Step 8: Distance: At this point, there is discernible, objective distance in the union. They have gone from bad to worse. They both know it, and anyone who spends any amount of time with them knows it. Creating separation at this juncture in the downward spiral is inevitable. Typically, they will come to counseling once at this place. If not counseling, the partners muddle along, assuming the roles of roommates or business partners, staying together for any number of self-serving reasons.
They need an action plan to work through the eight steps presented here while identifying and owning what is true and false in their marriage. Being open to talking about what is wrong will be crucial in the restoration process. For example, I might recommend the couple sit down with a third party and discuss the content of this chapter. The hope and process would be to work through the mind map in reverse. Let me explain.
Step One: They have to own what is wrong with them and with their marriage. This action is the ownership line in the mind map, and it means they will actively confess their sins to each other and God. No reconciliation can happen until they neutralize all the sins. The only way they can counteract their sinfulness is to own what’s wrong, which includes confession and mutual forgiveness. If this happens, they can be reconciled and can move to step two.
Step Two: Reconciliation does not remove the sin in the sense of making it not matter anymore. Saying, “I forgive you?” or asking, “Will you forgive me?” will not cause the bitterness to vaporize or the respect the individual desires to magically appear. Owning and neutralizing the sin positions them to do what they could never do before, which is to talk about what was wrong. They could not talk about their problems because there was no authentic, genuine, Christ-exalting, grace-empowered, devil-robbing confession and forgiveness. If the forgiveness is real, they can get to work with what has gone wrong in their marriage: dealing with the bitterness and other issues. Their sin, if handled correctly, is like road kill. It is dead, never to be revived again. How they interact with each other post-forgiveness will quickly tell if their sin is road kill or if it has been resurrected. If there is still a residual effect of the sin, they need to pause and consider this question: Why is the death of Christ not enough to take care of the sin in your relationship? This part will take time, but there is grace for it if they are willing to humble themselves before the Lord and each other.
Step Three: The Christian life is repentance and ongoing repenting. Sin and repentance are never one and done. There will always be more of the former, which necessitates the latter. As they continue to walk out repentance with the Lord and with each other, they will position themselves to begin to take the sting out of their anger, disappointment, and expectations. This process will help them to become better stewards of their desires. They will still desire what they desire, but those desires will no longer control them. This place in their relationship with God and each other frees them from the bondage of sin, creating a pathway to a good marriage.
In most marriage counseling situations, both partners do not get to the place of asking for help at the same time. Usually, one person is more in favor of making a God-centered change than the other person. If that is the case, here are four pre-steps before you can activate the previously mentioned steps.
Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.
In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).
