ROMANCE SECRET #10
TRUE LOVE ENDURES
I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.
John 16:33, NLT
Set in the upstate New York wilderness during the French and Indian war, the 1992 movie The Last of the Mohicans shows us one tough couple: Hawkeye, a raised-by-Indians[1] long-rifle sniper hero, and Cora, the beautiful, brave, and previously pampered daughter of Colonel Edmund Monroe. In the course of a few days, the war brings the couple many challenges.
In the big-picture view, their fate is intertwined with four opposing forces: the British army, the French army, the Indians, and the pioneer settlers. But primarily their lives are entangled by the evil revenge plans of Magua, a bad-tempered Huron who is obsessed with Cora. He would just as soon burn her at the stake as marry her. Either way, he is determined to make her suffer.
Throughout most of the movie Cora and Hawkeye agree on one thing: they desire a life together, preferably a long one. To make that happen, they have to somehow endure a series of crises: Indians on the warpath, random sniper fire, onslaught by French soldiers, kidnappings, firing squads, taking an arrow through the heart, being burned at the stake, and falling off high cliffs.
What can’t be cured must be endured.
John Adams in a letter to his wife, Abigail
At a pivotal moment of the movie, Hawkeye realizes he must leave Cora, who will then most certainly fall into the hands of Magua. Just before they have their fateful night parting, the couple stand in a cave as a waterfall cascades behind them. The rugged frontiersman shouts to his British beauty above the noise of the rushing water: “You be strong, you survive . . . You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you.”[2]
Like John and Stasi Eldredge, I believe that every couple lives “in a great love story, set in the midst of war.”[3]
Let me explain what I mean by “midst of war.” It means a crisis or a foreign force acting on your marriage —it’s not fighting between spouses. In “Romance Secret #4: True Love Fights for Peace,” I used the term conflict to describe internal strife, or spouse-versus-spouse issues. The term crisis refers to an “external” issue. Marriage crises come in many forms: cancer, disability, in-laws, job loss, financial failures, infidelity, the loss of a child, and so on. It is the couple versus everything or anyone else. In the case of Hawkeye and Cora, it was basically the entire New World universe coming against them.
When a crisis hits your home, what do you do to protect your marriage? What do you expect as the outcome?
When Erin and I are confronted with a crisis, we pull together —and we expect to grow from the experience, no matter how arduous. Whoa, Greg, you might be thinking, I expect to take tranquilizers or a vacation after a crisis, but what do you mean “grow from the experience”?
I already showed you how an argument can be broken down into these crazy, counterintuitive formulas:
RELATIONSHIP FRICTION + INSIGHT = INTIMACY INFORMATION
INTIMACY INFORMATION + HEALTHY COMMUNICATION = HAPPY MARRIAGE
Conflict management can actually help you build intimacy once you learn how to resolve issues.
In the same way, surviving a marriage crisis is not only possible, but those difficult times can also be redeemed by God and transformed into experiences that will strengthen your marriage. Although painful, working through a crisis can force you to grow as an individual. Then you will have the maturity to confront and fix other problems in your relationship, perhaps issues you have been “stuck” on for years. The process looks like this:
CRISIS + INSIGHT = PERSONAL GROWTH
PERSONAL GROWTH + CONFLICT RESOLUTION = STRONGER MARRIAGE
Here’s a list of situations that can create a crisis in marriage. Check the ones that you and your spouse have already faced over the course of your marriage.
death of a loved one- child with a disability
- caring for an elderly parent
- miscarriage
- natural disaster
- job stress
- infidelity
- infertility
- retirement
- a move
- sexual difficulties
- trouble with in-laws
- loss of a job and/or financial setback
- physical or mental illnesses
- spiritual attack
- war
- beginning college or a graduate program
- career setback
- new life phase[4]
If you’ve ever faced one of these crises, then you and your spouse are veterans and have already developed some strength and wisdom from experience. In the sections that follow, I’m going to present what I believe are the hallmarks of couples who know how to endure, to agree on a vision, to pull together to meet crises successfully, and to come out stronger.
STRONG COUPLES KNOW CRISIS IS THE NORM
Strong couples don’t consider it strange when trials beset them. They know that life contains many places akin to the psalmist’s “valley of the shadow of death.” But they know these dangerous places come between every peak in life. The couple may have strong emotional reactions when the crisis hits, and they may even be caught off guard, but they are not surprised. Even as a single man, the apostle Paul knew this truth. He wrote, “Those who marry will face many troubles in this life” (1 Corinthians 7:28).
At the beginning of The Last of the Mohicans, Cora is a newcomer to the wilderness. She is shocked to find a pioneer settlers’ homestead burned to the ground, the bodies of women and children left in the open meadow. By the final scene, she has experienced just about every problem 1757 has to offer except smallpox, but if that, too, hit the feisty heroine, you get the feeling she’d be ready.
Strong Couples Stick It Out
The colonial times Adamses (Abigail and John, not Morticia and Gomez) endured fifty-four years of “for better or for worse” and had more “worse” than many couples will in this century. They knew the kind of strength God promises in Romans 5:3-5 that
We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
How does that kind of character help sustain a marriage? Even if you’re unhappy now and thinking of calling it quits, or you feel trapped in a loveless marriage, stick it out. Endurance pays off. Here’s why: Two-thirds of unhappily married spouses who stayed married reported that their marriages were happy five years later. In addition, the most unhappy marriages reported the most dramatic turnarounds: among those who rated their marriages as very unhappy, almost eight out of ten who avoided divorce were happily married five years later.[7]
Erin has some friends who fit this description, Arianna and J. J. Withers. She met them by chance in the park one summer evening. Erin tells the story . . .
As Arianna and J. J.’s twin sons played with Taylor and Murphy on the slides and swings, I sat at a picnic table with the Withers shelling pistachios. J. J. was particularly depressed, and the couple was thinking about splitting up so that Arianna wouldn’t have to deal with his anger. They had gotten off to a poor start in their marriage because Arianna got pregnant their senior year in college, “forcing” them to get married. J. J., especially, felt trapped.
Here it was five years later and neither had a career, and they had all but let go of their dreams. They were paying bills day-by-day, switching jobs every eighteen months, feeling as if they were stuck, and that their youth was being flushed down the toilet. J. J. admitted that recently his temper was getting out of control; he’d put a fist through the drywall in the twins’ room after they’d put Play-Doh into the swamp cooler.
I encouraged them to stay the course, that really it would only make things worse if J. J. left. But I also knew they had to deal with J. J.’s anger immediately. I asked him to meet with Greg, and they had breakfast the next Saturday morning. Greg challenged J. J. to pull it together, to stop looking back and to move forward. He told him you can’t see where you’re going if your eyes are on the rearview mirror. It wasn’t the marriage that was trapping him, but his mindset that he had somehow been cheated.
I follow them now on Facebook. J. J. got an MBA, they moved, and he’s now making plenty of money working for a soft drink company in Atlanta. Arianna sent me a FB message the other day thanking me for encouraging them to stay together four years before. She loves being a mom (their fourth child is on the way), and J. J. is “back to normal,” more like the happy, optimistic man she met in college.
Strong Couples Rebuild Trust After a Breach
Trust isn’t something that is final in a marriage; it must be rebuilt every day. “The name of the LORD is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe” (Proverbs 18:10).
Trust isn’t something that is final in a marriage; it must be rebuilt every day.
Remember my friend Geoff from “Romance Secret #3”? He reconciled with his wife after his “Bathsheba debacle.” The infiltration of the other woman was the crisis. Geoff and his wife searched their hearts to find insight, growth, forgiveness, healing, and then strength. It took awhile for his wife to trust him, but his confession went a long way toward opening the doors. She knew he truly wanted to come clean, and that helped her let go of bitterness.
STRONG COUPLES RECOGNIZE THE REAL ENEMY
Just as the Smalleys do —and every other couple for that matter —you will face hardship, you will face suffering, you will face opposition, and you will face a multitude of attacks from our sworn enemy.
John and Stasi Eldredge wrote this about the chief enemy of marriage in their book Love & War:
Marriage is hard. It is hard because it is opposed. The devil hates marriage; he hates the beautiful picture of Jesus and his Bride that it represents. He hates love and life and beauty in all its forms. The world hates marriage. It hates unity and faithfulness and monogamy. Our flesh is not our ally here either —it rebels when we put others before ourselves. Our flesh hates dying.[8]
Satan’s strategy seems to be to keep us oblivious to the bigger picture that was mentioned at the beginning of the chapter: our marriage is a love story, set in the midst of war. If we don’t understand this deep in our hearts, we fall right into Satan’s second strategy, which is to get us fighting each other so he can “divide and conquer.”
We need God and we need each other —desperately.
Your spouse is not the enemy! Satan is the enemy, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him” (1 Peter 5:8-9). Our marriage has a tirelessly engaged enemy who wants to “kill, steal and destroy” our relationship with God and each other. You must maintain a united front that says, “We’re in this together! We need God and we need each other —desperately.”
ENDURING COUPLES TRUST GOD
The prophet Malachi tells the Israelites what God says, “I hate divorce” (Malachi 2:16). God cares about marriage. Let me rephrase that thought too: God cares about your marriage. If you doubt that, meditate on the following scriptures with your spouse and individually:
- Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7)
- God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)
- God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1)
- And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
Let me remind you of Janine and Bertie Harris’s story from “Romance Secret #7.” The part I didn’t tell you about was how Janine grew strong enough to endure the tough times. Early in her marriage, she attended women’s events and Bible studies at church. Janine fell in love with Scripture. She posted index cards decorated with positive Bible verses and taped them up all around the house. She bought pillows, pictures, blankets, stationery, coffee mugs, T-shirts, and jewelry with scriptures on them. Eventually, Bertie began to think differently because everywhere he looked at home, a Bible verse was waiting to be read, waiting to comfort him.
If you need to build your faith as a couple, consider joining a couples’ Sunday school class, small group, or do a home Bible study together.
STRONG COUPLES PRAY
I believe you should pray individually and with your spouse. Erin and I have worked on this over the years. We touch base in the evenings and pray for our family. We pray together as a family also. When we’re at church and are asked to pray, our family members seek one another out to hold hands.
God promises to give you wisdom if you ask for it in faith through prayer. So, what are you waiting for? Here are some verses that may inspire you:
- Commit your works to the LORD and your plans will be established. (Proverbs 16:3, NASB)
- Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:6-9, NASB)
- But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting. (James 1:5-6, NASB)
Strong Couples Keep Their Hearts Open
There’s a myth in our culture that says, “I’m not in love with you anymore so I’m free to leave you.” Please hear me when I say that “love” is not the issue —we have access to that in abundance through God. Keeping an open heart to allow God’s love to flow through us is the first and foremost job of any spouse. (See the sections Managing Conflict in Healthy Ways and Clamming Up Versus Mortal Combat in “Romance Secret #4.”)
More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.
Doug Larson, cartoonist and columnist
The real issue is a closed or hardened heart. Let me put it this way: Jesus did not say, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because . . . you’re not in love with her . . . or your needs aren’t being met . . . or you’ve found someone new.” He in fact said this was the reason for divorce: “because your hearts were hard” (Matthew 19:8).
Let me tell you about one person I met at the National Institute of Marriage. This was back in 1999 when MSN first offered its instant messaging service, and Bradley Peterson didn’t know the message history could be automatically saved. He found out the hard way when his wife, Olive, discovered a series of illicit conversations stored on the family computer.
I can tell you this, Olive didn’t feel very much “in love” with Bradley, especially because she had proof that he was “in love” with someone else.
After a few sessions of individual counseling, Olive decided not to shut down her heart and close off her husband. Instead, she opened her heart to the idea of forgiveness, giving Bradley a second chance. First, she had to trust him when he said the IMs and phone calls were all he had shared with a woman who lived 1,500 miles away. After that, Olive’s trust extended to Bradley every day, because with each new gadget or app introduced to the general market, her husband had a new opportunity to seek out someone else on the sly. She felt that even if she earned a degree in information technology, there would be no way she could police him, because even then he could write a letter with paper and pen and there’d not be a trace of incriminating electronic evidence.
But Olive doesn’t have to worry anymore about digital or carbon-based infidelity. Because of the healing and opening of communication that took place between her and Bradley, they’ve been able to reestablish trust.
The real battle is to keep your heart open and guard against apathy and hardness.
Olive learned that she couldn’t control love, but she could control the state of her heart. She trusted God to do the rest.
Strong couples guard their hearts from closing, and that way they keep from falling “into trouble” (Proverbs 28:14). The real battle is to keep your heart open and guard against apathy and hardness. Focusing on your own personal growth as an individual is probably the single most important thing you can do to save or improve your marriage. Erin and I will show you how to do this in the next chapter, “Romance Secret #11: True Love Looks Inward.”
STRONG COUPLES FOLLOW A VISION
At the opening of The Last of the Mohicans, Cora and Hawkeye might seem like opposites because he was a frontiersman who wore leather stockings and she was from Boston and wore silk ones. Though their outside appearances were different, it only took a few scenes to establish what really connected them besides physical attraction: the call of the American dream, with its freedom, autonomy, and individualism. Upon hearing Hawkeye describe the people who live in the wilderness, she said, “It is more deeply stirring to my blood than any imagining could possibly have been.”[9] From that moment on, Hawkeye is captivated through their shared passion for independence.
If your marriage could be stronger, perhaps you need a paradigm shift. Don’t try to seal up holes in a rowboat if what you really need is a sailboat. Don’t work on the relationship you have; instead, build something new, something that thrills you both. Jesus told the Pharisees to put new wine into new wineskins,[10] not old ones —this is the same idea.
STRONG COUPLES FIGHT NEGATIVE BELIEFS
I believe most conflict is due to misunderstanding. Strong couples stop making negative assumptions and replace them with curiosity. Give your spouse the benefit of the doubt. Recognize your mate’s value. Ask questions because that will most likely keep you from jumping into judgment mode.
If Erin and I had understood how to do this, we would have never experienced Hurricane O. I should have asked her, “Honey, why don’t you want to swim?” instead of assuming She doesn’t want to be with me. I would have found out that Erin is prone to “catastrophizing,” that is turning over the possibilities in her mind that everything could turn into a disaster. I’ve since learned to be patient when she is presented with a potentially threatening scenario.
Erin says that she’s also learned to give me the benefit of the doubt:
When Greg bought the Ms. Pac-Man machine, for example, I might have assumed he did it because he was out to get me for sometimes caring too much what the house looks like, that he was selfish and insensitive to the core. But when I asked him why he’d bought it, he told me that he thought it would remind me of California. Once I was able to see his heart, I knew that he really had, at some bizarre primordial level, been trying to reconnect with the early days of our relationship. A Red Robin gift card would have sufficed.
STRONG COUPLES CELEBRATE DIFFERENCES
Strong couples learn to accept differences as good things. I’ve come to rely on Erin to help me judge what’s best for the kids. Her background as a nurse came in handy this week after Garrison sprained his ankle. On the other side of the coin, she says that as a family, we have more fun because I’m willing to seek adventure more often than she would. Sure, we’ve had conflict over that, but overall we are now more centered, appreciating the differences each of us brings to the marriage table.
Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes … look it squarely in the eye and say, “I will be bigger than you.”
Ann Landers, advice columnist and author
We’ve also learned to accept each other’s limitations. You must realize that in order to be happy with your spouse, you don’t necessarily have to like every single thing about him or her. You have to accept that’s just part of marriage. Most couples never resolve most of their key problems. And if they leave the marriage union, they’d most likely find different but equally upsetting and unfixable problems with the next person.
While I appreciate Erin’s sense of responsibility, I know sometimes it can’t be mitigated, and that is frustrating. Remember the 2014 Ebola scare? Well, they could have put Erin in charge of that whole operation, and that virus would have been shaking to the core of its lipid membrane. I believe she’s capable of outthinking and outplanning just about anyone. At home, it’s her first reaction to keep the kids and me from harm. It’s my last. She’s not going to change, but I don’t let it set me off like it used to in the honeymoon phase.
Overcoming the differences in your personalities turns you into a team.
Overcoming the differences in your personalities turns you into a team. So, you either win or lose together. There is no such thing as a win-lose arrangement because you are on the same team, and if your spouse loses, inevitably so do you.
STRONG COUPLES SEEK HELP
Please don’t do marriage alone. Seek out other couples who believe in marriage and will support you as you seek to establish a unifying vision. If you’re in trouble or merely not thriving as a couple, seek counseling, marriage seminars, books, videos, or other resources. Surround yourselves with supportive people, knowing that, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity” (Proverbs 17:17, NIV, 2011).
Strong couples set aside a time weekly to talk about how things are going in their relationship. (See “Romance Secret #7: True Love Needs Time to Grow.”) Talk about any issues that arise or emotions you are feeling. Schedule this time in the office of a counselor if you need help to ensure these discussions are productive and don’t escalate into blame games or arguments.
STRONG COUPLES REMINISCE
A friend’s father had a stroke last month. She went to stay with her parents to provide moral and practical support. She brought along a tape recorder and taped more than six hours of their marriage memories. Sure they squabbled a bit now and again about a certain detail —“No, it was Aunt Agnes, not Ruth who brought the tomato aspic” —but overall they were giddy talking about their courtship, honeymoon, and times when they lived abroad in Air Force housing.
Charity certainly means one of two things —pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Focus on the Acts 14:27 moments. This verse says, “[The disciples] gathered [at] the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.” When you’ve got a few minutes, rehearse what you will say when you’re in your eighties and one of your children asks you what your marriage was like.
STRONG COUPLES CULTIVATE HOPE
Okay, spoiler time. Don’t read what’s next if you’ve not seen The Last of the Mohicans but are planning to.
In one of the near-final scenes of the movie, all seems lost for Cora and her sister, Alice. They are on a craggy mountain trail, being forced to walk the treacherous trail by Magua and his kin.
Uncas, a young Mohican friend of Hawkeye attacks Magua, seeking to free the women. He fights valiantly, but perishes at the hand of Magua. Alice despairs and stands at the edge of a cliff as if to jump. As Magua tries to coax her back to safety, she defiantly jumps off the ledge —giving up hope.
Cora, who is now near broken, her heart rent from watching her sister fall, remains with her enemies. And in the next scene Hawkeye defies all odds and frees her with the help of Uncas’s father, now the last Mohican.
Couples, take heart. Be strong and courageous when you feel surrounded by the enemy.[11] And you will be surrounded, that’s a sure bet. But here’s an even greater certainty for you to cling to: “If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him . . . he will remain faithful” (2 Timothy 2:11-13).
Up next, “Romance Secret #11: True Love Looks Inward,” on dealing with your own part of the problem and how God can help you love your spouse in spite of yourself.
For special date night ideas and discussion questions, you can visit crazylittlethingcalledmarriage.com.