Ever After, But Not Always Happily!

In our fallen world, we continue to experience the effects of what took place that day sin entered into the picture. We began to hide from God and from one another. Intimacy was invaded, and we were left with two ways of coping. We have found as we work with couples, and in our own marriage, that these two ways are hiding and blaming. Pretty close to what Adam and Eve experienced that day! They hid from God, and lots of blaming took place. "She did it, God, and you were the one who gave her to me," Adam proclaimed (see Genesis 3:12). The snake got a bad rap, and everyone started hiding themselves with those fig leaves.

A couple sat across from me in a recent session and I listened to the same story that I hear over and over again. Jason resists coming home at night because he feels Melissa does not meet his needs and blames him for much of her emotional turmoil. She says that he doesn't pay enough attention to her, all he cares about is himself, and he only plays with the baby because he is supposed to. Meanwhile he feels that she is only in touch with her own feelings, completely misunderstands him, and does not encourage him as a husband, father, and provider. They argue, then retreat. Nothing is resolved and intimacy is hindered. The "happily ever after" us becomes the "mad at each other" us.

Oddly, this same scenario has been going on for centuries, and we are not doing anything much differently to change it. We continue to deal with conflict and differences in the same ways that Adam and Eve did back in the garden.

Blaming is a very large part of how we function as human beings in most of our relationships. (If you are parents, you see it happen all the time with the kids. One sibling is constantly pointing the finger at the other sibling.) We simply do not want to take responsibility for our behavior, and it rarely occurs to us to sit back and try to understand the heart of our spouse. We are not intentional about how we listen to them even in their emotional experience of hurt or anger or fear. If we are completely honest, once we start to feel the emotions, we begin to focus on our need at the moment and how our spouse should be meeting it or at least listening to us.

We can become good at hiding when we find that blaming doesn't get the results we wanted, so now we just don't share at all. Trouble is, we are still experiencing emotions at some level and we sacrifice intimacy with our spouse when we hide our heart from their heart.

But "happily" is still God's plan for us! He desires for us to experience love, friendship, and deep intimacy, but we must come to grips with what is going on in the ever after that is not so happy, and the sooner the better. If we don't, we become disillusioned and defeated and feel as if our expectations were all for naught! This can set us up for a lifetime of marital defeat rather than marital bliss.

Differently Ever After