In today’s world, a couple cannot afford not to be accountable to each other. But there is also value in having other couples in your life who care about you and your marriage and who will be a positive influence. There’s little value in being a “loner couple” when faced with the pressures of life.
Both of us grew up in churches that numbered only several hundred people. The congregations were small enough that everyone knew everyone else, and newcomers were recognized as such and welcomed. The older people cared about the young people, and the young people knew and cared about the old folks. They knew each other’s names and were interested in each other’s lives.
One of Jan’s favorite people in her home church was Mrs. Mollisee, an elderly woman who lived alone. While growing up, she and Jan would talk together most every week, keeping tabs on each other even though they were probably sixty years apart in age. Jan knew Mrs. Mollisee was a prayer warrior, and she had a great impact on Jan.
Dave knew an older man, also named David, who took an interest in him, especially during his senior year in high school. Several times after church, the older David took young Dave to lunch and became a positive influence on the choices Dave was making and on the path he was heading down.
Today, in the impersonal age of the large church, that doesn’t happen very often. Add to that the fact that the popularity of the extended family has waned, with family members living all over the country. As a result, couples have lost a major source of strength that leaves their marriage and their own nuclear family vulnerable. Instead of the extended family providing strength to a couple, and the connected church family being an accountability factor for couples, we need to create our own accountability connections.
Here are some Action Plans that will help you become more connected and more accountable in ways that will enhance your ability to experience SMART Love.
Action Plan #A1—Make a List
One of the predictors that suggests a couple’s marriage will be successful is that the couple has other friends who are couples, and they are friends with each other. It’s not that the husband has his married male friends, or that the wife has her married female friends. Those are not predictors of success. Success comes to those couples who have other couples in their lives where both the husband and the wife are friends with the other husband and wife.
Make a list of all the couples you are both connected to in some way. Perhaps you’re in a couples’ Bible study, or your kids are friends with other kids and you know their parents. There might be some couples you barely know, but you believe you’d enjoy their friendship as a couple. Include them on your list as well.
When your list is complete, refine it. Pull out any and all couples that you feel you are already close to and believe they are trustworthy. They will be on your A-list.
Next, pull out any couples you would like to get to know better. They might be the parents of your kids’ friends, or they could just be couples you see at church or school, and when you talk briefly with them, you go away thinking they would be fun to get to know better. They will be on your B-list.
Talk together about your A-list first. Ask yourselves how you can strengthen the connections with one of those couples. How might you get to know this couple better? Perhaps it would be through having them over for dinner or meeting them somewhere for a meal. Be creative and make this a fun project. The next Action Plan will take it a step further.
Action Plan #A2—Start a Couples’ Group
Spend some time reflecting on both your A-list and your B-list, pick several couples you think would enjoy each other, and start a group. There are two different possibilities you can explore.
First, consider four or five couples you think would be open to getting together for a weekend. Our group started with one of the wives setting up a ladies’ getaway. It took some planning, but it was set for a hotel on the central coast of California, halfway between where we all lived. (It’s better not to pick a place too fancy—just a place to relax, talk, and have fun.) While there, the women talked about a lot of things, but one thing they were all interested in was how to include their husbands in the next outing. Boldly, they set a tentative place and date. Each returned home with a sense of excitement about their weekend and a plan for the couples to get together in four months. Dates were confirmed, and three of the five couples (the Northern California group) took on the task of planning the weekend.
During the thirty years we’ve been meeting, we’ve been to all kinds of interesting places. We’ve hiked in the Sierra Nevada mountains, stayed in a condo on the beach, and explored San Diego and San Francisco. We also went to Bodega Bay, where Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds was filmed. Wherever you live, there are great places to explore. But don’t over-plan; always leave time for just being together and talking.
One of the couples who is part of our group started another group of couples, all of whom live in the same area. Now they have two groups. One of our sons just spent a week with two other couples who have been meeting annually for almost ten years. They include their kids on their outings, while our group is just for the couples. There’s no set way to do the outing. All it requires is some creative planning that is spread around, and a commitment from each person to always be present.
Second, consider starting a couples’ group that meets weekly or biweekly to discuss a book of the Bible or a book like this one. We’ve found that the best purpose for a group like this is not just to study together but also to include the personal application of what you study. This way the couples get to know each other better and become more accountable to each other.
Remember, the purpose is to develop the kind of connection with other couples that allows you to become loving accountability partners with them. Whichever type of couples’ group you start, or whether you start both types, the goal is the kind of friendship that develops trusting relationships in which it is safe to be known by the other couples.
Action Plan #A3—Connect with a Mentor
In addition to developing trusting friends as a couple and being accountable to each other, it is important to have a same-sex mentor in your life. A mentor is an advisor, a guide, and/or a coach who acts as a consultant. They do not fill the role of a parent, although they can be a good parental figure in our lives.
The Bible affirms the value of mentors. Paul taught that older women “should teach others what is good. These older women would train the younger women to love their husbands and their children, to live wisely and be pure, to work in their homes, to do good, and to be submissive to their husbands” (Titus 2:3–4). Obviously, a good female mentor is a woman who exemplifies these characteristics.
Paul goes on to instruct Titus, his mentee, to be a mentor to the young men. He tells him to “encourage the young men to live wisely. And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching” (vv. 6–7).
A mentor is not someone who has it all together but one who has integrity and lives in a way that sets a good example. Above all, they need to be trustworthy. If you are young, you need an older person to guide you along the path they have already taken. If you are older, you can still benefit from a mentor. Being older may mean you are already a mentor, but you are also accountable to friends your own age.
My primary accountability partner was a close friend I had since my college days. He died recently, yet he was an example to me of what we often talked about. We were both in some form of ministry, and our goal was to finish well. Many of those in ministry slip and tragically fall—they don’t finish well. I can say my friend finished well, and I intend to do the same. Fortunately, I have other close friends who are willing to hold me accountable.
Action Plan #A4—Enhance Sexual Fidelity
Years ago, we heard Charlie and Martha Shedd speak on marriage. During one of their talks, they shared what it was like to live in a beach community that also was a vacation spot. Often, as they would walk the beach, one of them would notice a good-looking man or woman. They would point that person out to their spouse and then give a 1 to 10 rating. They made a fun game out of what they were observing. In this way, everything was out in the open—not much chance of secret thoughts or feelings.
As I reflect on what they shared, I realize it wasn’t the rating system, it was more the comfort they had talking with each other about someone else’s attractiveness. They modeled an openness that involved being accountable to each other in the area of sexuality.
To get a sense of how comfortable you are talking about sexual issues, take the following quiz out loud together. Read the statement, discuss the possible answers, then pick one. Talk about the statement and your thoughts about why you answered as you did.
1. When I am with my spouse and see an attractive person of the opposite sex:
A. I look away and say nothing.
B. I struggle to look away.
C. I make some kind of honest comment to my spouse.
2. When my spouse expresses a concern about something in my behavior toward someone of the opposite sex:
A. I tend to defend my innocence.
B. I change the subject.
C. I listen and learn.
3. When we see something sexual or sensual on TV or in a movie:
A. Neither of us says anything.
B. One of us talks about the decline in morality in our time.
C. We discuss what we saw and how we really reacted.
4. When I have sexual feelings for my spouse:
A. I tend to act sexual and hope for the best.
B. I am quiet and wait for the bedroom.
C. I can talk openly about my needs and feelings.
5. When I want to try something different in the bedroom:
A. I can’t talk about it, since we don’t talk about sex.
B. I just try.
C. We can have an open conversation about it.
If you have more “A” answers, you need to talk together more about the issues of attractiveness, lustful feelings, and your own sexual relationship. “A” answers indicate that sex is too much of a closed subject with one or both of you. If you have more “B” answers, you’re not much better off, but at least you try. My hope is that you both are comfortable with the “C” answers.
Sex is really one form of communication. If you can’t talk about sexual matters with each other, over time it will limit your intimacy together. If it is really difficult for you to talk about sexual things, you may need to work with a counselor to develop more comfort in talking about sex together.
Action Plan #A5—Discuss Money and Power
Who has the power in your marriage? The one who controls the money. Often when a husband who had complete control of the money dies, the wife has no idea how much money she has or even how and where to access the money. This is a tragic circumstance that should never happen! It is the result of a big power play on the part of the husband.
The goal is to see how you can achieve a balance of power in your marriage. That means there is an openness along with a shared responsibility regarding all aspects of money. Here’s a list of what both parties may want to be aware of:
Approximate net worth
Liquid assets (available cash)—where?
Fixed assets (property)
Liabilities (money owed):
List of payments and the due dates
Sources of income
At least an approximate budget
Spendable income each month, if any
Talk together about which of these are most important to each of you. Sometimes one person may say, “I don’t need to know all this,” and that’s fine. But regardless of your age, it helps to have a record of all of the above someplace that is available to both of you, and to update it every six months or so. That way, if something happens to the one managing the money, the record is there and is kept where it is always available to the other spouse.
Sometimes one spouse may keep the financial status a secret because it is basically bad news. The net worth is written in red ink. But the point is the same—openness and accountability. If your net worth is in the red, get involved with something like Crown Financial Ministries or Dave Ramsey’s program. Either one can provide a doable way out of debt.
Action Plan #A6—Be Spiritually Accountable
We believe that the husband needs to be the initiator for building a spiritually accountable marriage. That may seem old-fashioned, but we’ve only seen couples develop spiritual intimacy when the husband takes the initiative.
It’s like dancing. We’ve talked with couples who’ve taken dance lessons, and to the uninitiated, it seems strange that the man is called to lead. The woman is usually the better dancer, probably because she took lessons as a little girl. A man typically doesn’t have any experience as a kid with dancing, so he starts as a real beginner. Yet in spite of his lack of practice and his clumsiness, he is the one who’s going to lead the couple. It’s not hard to imagine what would happen if the woman was told to lead. The man would never learn to dance. He has to bungle his way through the early discomfort and lead his better-equipped-to-dance wife.
The same principle applies to the spiritual side of a couple’s marriage. For some reason, women are more comfortable doing spiritual activities with others than the typical male is. Maybe it’s because they take part in women’s Bible studies, where they learn to be comfortable talking about the Bible, and maybe they are praying out loud around the other women. Unless the husband is a pastor, he probably has very little experience doing spiritual activities with other people. And even then, a male pastor doing spiritual activities together with just his wife feels an awkwardness like that of the first dance lesson. The same is true for men in general.
A good way to begin is by having the husband take the initiative to reserve seven minutes a day, four times a week, to read a passage of the Bible together. Or let him initiate a time when you both pray together, just the two of you. If one of you is not comfortable praying out loud, then try this: First, talk about the things you want to pray about. Then take each other’s hands while the husband says, “Let’s pray.” You each pray silently, and when you are finished, you squeeze your spouse’s hands, and when they are finished, they squeeze your hands. You’ve just prayed together!
It’s the intentionality that is important. You have just intentionally prayed together. Gradually, over time, one of you may say “amen” out loud, and then at some point you may actually pray out loud together. That’s the goal. One woman said that when she heard her husband pray for their kids, she could actually hear his heart for them.
The goal over time is to become comfortable doing spiritual things together, including taking each other’s spiritual temperature, so to speak. Can you and your spouse sit together and talk about how each of you is doing spiritually? That’s the ultimate goal of being accountable spiritually.
Remember, not only are the spiritual activities initiated by the husband, but making spiritual activities a consistent and ongoing part of the marriage is also his responsibility.
Action Plan #A7—Parent from the Same Page
One of the devious behaviors any young kid will develop is becoming a wedge between Mom and Dad. If young Sammy asks Mom to do something and she says no, and then a little later he asks Dad if he can do the same thing and Dad says yes, you can easily see the potential for conflict between the parents. And that marriage is headed for trouble.
Imagine the scene: Sammy does what he wanted to do. Mom gets mad and prepares to discipline him. But before she can, Sammy says to her, “Dad told me I could!” Now the issue isn’t between Mom and Sammy but between Mom and Dad. And Sammy gets to skate on the problem, at least for a while.
That’s a simple situation in which it is clear how the problem started. It wasn’t based on different philosophies of parenting.
As our starting point for how we parent, we all face either the repetition of what we experienced growing up or a complete reaction against it. Typically, couples are drawn together without knowing whether or not they agree on how to parent. They may have talked about it, but until the children arrive, the conversation is often very idealistic.
Begin your discussion by defining as best you can your basic parenting style. Are you more permissive than your spouse? Are you more of an authoritarian as a parent? Or are you more of a laissez-faire parent who is hands-off until a crisis hits home? Where do you agree about parenting issues, and where do you disagree? To help you remember, think about your last argument over a parenting issue.
In the previous chapter, we talked about the balance between being kind and being firm in our parenting. Which direction do you tend to go when kindness and firmness get out of balance? When you go one way, it’s almost a guarantee that your spouse will go the opposite. It’s just human nature to do so. That is, unless you are aware of your own contribution to the problem. If you have trouble getting on the same page with each other, get a book on parenting and read it together. Whether or not you agree with the premise of the book, it will give you a common starting point for discussing how to compromise and reach a common approach in your parenting behavior.
If that doesn’t work, talk with one of your couple friends who seem to be calm and collected in their parenting. Ask them what they do as parents, and what they would do in your situation. Part of why you are developing these trusted friendships is to be accountable to each other as couples. This may be the time and the situation for that.
Action Plan #A8—Manage Your Schedules
One of the things we would do at our Friday morning breakfast ritual was synchronize our schedules. Each week we would talk about what was on the schedule for the next week. Then every couple of weeks, we would take out our calendars and compare them to see that we both knew what was going on schedule-wise. Other couples we know have a master calendar that they keep in plain view in their kitchen. Whenever something needs to be put on the calendar, they not only write it down, but they also tell their spouse what they wrote and what the event is about.
But what do you do when the schedule is out of control? That’s when you have to learn to say no to some things. Sometimes the things you are asked to do sound so inviting that you want to say an instant yes. But remember, you’re a couple, and what one person does affects the other. Make a habit of saying, “Let me check with my spouse, and I’ll get back to you.”
The problem with many of our schedules today is that they are compounded by our kids’ schedules. It’s kind of an in thing to be child centered. For many couples, their lives are run by their kids’ schedules. So sometimes the “no” isn’t about something the parents are asked to do; it’s something we are expected to do for our kids.
This doesn’t mean you cut back on what you’re doing with your kids. It does mean that you become more serious about the choices you and your kids are making. It is okay to say no to something one of your kids wants to do because you’re exhausted. If they can make it happen another way, fine. But you have the choice to say no.
It all boils down to you as a couple focusing more on the choices you have, where you say yes or no. But it also involves teaching each other, as well as others in your family, how to make good choices.
It always helps to have some family rituals in place that cannot be violated by any individual. If Sunday night is family night, with a special menu, various activities, and time spent with the family, it’s much easier to be able to say no than if there are no rituals in place. So not only do you work with the calendar, but you also focus on creating some meaningful rituals that can be enjoyed by all of you and benefit the sense of family.
Action Plan #A9—Examine Your Honesty Quotient
Since we said that everyone lies at times, let’s begin by remembering some of the white lies we’ve told, or the lies of omission we are guilty of committing. But let’s keep the examples out of the marriage relationship. Think of a time when you lied in one way or another in a relationship other than your marriage. Share the story with your spouse.
Often we stretch the truth with our kids or with other family members. We don’t have the energy to do something with someone when they ask, so we tell them a white lie: “I already have a commitment for that evening.” Our rationale is that “everyone does it.” And everyone does do it. But it works against our trustworthiness.
Our first lie as a young person was usually designed to avoid some kind of punishment. In some ways, we still lie in order to avoid punishment, or at least the punishing hassle we would create if we were truthful. But couples in great marriages have learned how to be truthful with each other. The underlying principle is found in Ephesians 4:15, where Paul says we are to “speak the truth in love.” A little later on in the chapter he adds, “Let us tell our neighbors [including our spouse] the truth, for we are all parts of the same body” (v. 25). What Paul is saying is a reflection of what the Old Testament prophet Zechariah said: “But this is what you must do: Tell the truth to each other” (8:16).
The problem is that if we are to “speak the truth in love,” it is a two-way street. It also involves hearing the truth in love. When a wife responds to her husband’s question about his weight, she needs to be truthful and loving as she says, “Yes, your weight bothers me.” But he also needs to be loving in his acceptance of her truthful statement and not become defensive or resentful.
How do we tell each other the truth in love? For starters, we need to soften the way we begin. I was working with a couple, and Amy discussed how Joe had confronted her about something I had asked them to do in the previous session. Amy was hurt and angry.
I asked Joe, “Can you soften how you begin your question and ask her again?”
He tried, but Amy was still angry and said to him, “See, you’re still blaming me, and I’m tired of it.”
“What were you trying to find out from Amy?” I asked him.
“I really just wanted to know how she felt about the assignment. I didn’t think I was blaming her for anything.”
“Why don’t you soften even more what you say and be more specific in what you are asking?” I suggested.
So he said to Amy, “I’m not blaming you, I’m just interested in how you felt about the assignment.”
This time Amy was able to respond. It takes practice to soften what we say to each other, but that’s the “in love” part of what Paul tells us.
In order to hear what the other person is saying in love, we need to remind ourselves to accept each other’s imperfections. Neither of us is perfect, nor are we going to say things perfectly. Take a minute and talk about a recent misunderstanding that you had with each other in which one or both of you misread your spouse’s statement or motivation.
The other problem we encounter is our tendency to personalize what our spouse says to us. Sometimes the speaker can defuse this tendency by beginning with something like, “I know we tend to personalize difficult conversations, and I don’t want you to think I’m attacking you. I just need for you to hear what I’m saying.” Remember, while the goal is to speak the truth in love, we have to work even harder at hearing the truth in love as well.
Action Plan #A10—Decide What You Will Do When You Get Off Track
Growth is an uneven process. We take two steps forward and feel like we’ve got it, and then we fall back into an old pattern. I worked with a couple who came up with a plan for what to do when one of them felt hurt by something the other said or did. They were to simply say something like, “That hurt me,” and the other person could not explain or defend their behavior. They would just apologize.
They were really good at following through with their plan, using hand signals whenever one would be tempted to explain or defend their behavior. They had agreed they would not do that.
After they had been successful for several weeks, I asked what they would do if one of them broke the rule and started to defend themselves, and the other got caught up in a counter defense—in other words, what they would do when the old pattern suddenly reemerged. They didn’t know, for both of them hadn’t yet gotten off track.
We talked and came up with a plan for getting back on track. They decided one of them would use a time-out signal that would be honored by the other person. Then they were to say something like, “We’re back to the old pattern. Let’s start over.” And of course, they soon had an opportunity to implement their plan to get back on track.
What’s your plan for how to reboot when one or both of you gets off track? Being prepared for the inevitable usually works, if it’s been agreed upon in a nonthreatening time in the relationship. Don’t become obsessive about doing the right things all the time, and don’t set up an expectation that everything is good and the old patterns are behind you. Paul reminds us, “If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). Go slow, but stay the course!