About a decade ago, my wife Stephanie and I were enjoying a rare night out together away from our then two young children. We were visiting a church and the service concluded with an opportunity to pair up with someone for prayer. In a casual moment of introduction, we announced to our prayer partner that we had been married for five years. Without a beat, the woman made a statement that has forever altered the way I view marriage. She stated, simply and boldly (with a southern drawl), “five years of marriage? It’s like y’all are in Kindergarten!”


Until that moment, I had never considered marriage—especially our marriage—through the lens of a development cycle. Instead, I had somehow assumed marriage was an event that happened on a specific date, in a specific year. As far as I was concerned, I was married…end of story. However, the thought of a five year old—a kindergartener—full of potential, full of questions, and pregnant with a developing future (not to mention all the tantrums, immaturity, and poor communication)— seemed to do a better job describing what my wife and I had been experiencing day-to-day.

Suddenly the first five years of our marriage—with the continual struggle to communicate with each other or make mutual decisions without one of us feeling violated—came into focus. No wonder we didn’t know exactly how to communicate with one another. No wonder we weren’t experts at conflict resolution or unity or mutual decision-making. We were only five-years old in our marriage (at the time). Would we expect a five-year-old child to be able to write a college essay? Of course not. A five-year- old can’t be expected to act or communicate like an adult. And yet it seems we make this mistake often when it comes to marriage. We expect ourselves—or other people—to be able to function likely fully grown adults in marriage, when the truth is we simply haven’t arrived at that stage of growth as a couple.  The hope for the five-year-old is not to act like an adult, but to learn what it takes to become an adult—and to be given the tools to grow into a happy, productive, functioning adult. The goal is not to avoid childhood altogether, but to grow out of the childhood eventually—with all it’s vying for attention, temper tantrums, and selfishness and to grow into something more mature.

It occurred to me after this experience: what if we looked at our marriages this way?

How would it change the way they function?

This thought process has lead to the more foundational belief that marriage is an ongoing action discovered with my wife; a development cycle. Marriage isn’t something we accomplished the day we said “I Do”. That was only the beginning of an entirely new being; the “one new flesh” so often referenced during traditional marriage ceremonies was born that day and must continue growing.

The day of marriage is not the end of the story, but the beginning. It brings into creation a brand new infant couple, pledging to learn the art of marrying their individual lives into one combined, married, maturing life together.

In other words, as much as I am presently married to Stephanie, it is more accurate to say that each day we are actively marrying each other further—as we bring our individual thoughts, responses, fears, and strengths into this intimate bond together.

So how does that change how we act as a married couple?

Most importantly, Steph and I have discovered our primary goal isn’t “learning to be married” in a static sense so much as learning the art of marrying our own individual responses, desires, and efforts in any present moment. 

Marriage is a moment-by-moment kind of thing. I know that can sound pretty vague, so here’s an example:

When we have a conflict, it is most often caused by one of a few things—a difference in the way we see a certain situation, unspoken expectations that aren’t met, or general frustration at the way the other person has handled something. As we approach the problem at hand, we each have different ways of dealing with it (dictated by our past experiences, our temperaments and personalities and also our fears and wounds). This can really easily lead to tension, as we we each seek to solve the conflict in our own individualistic way; through our own lenses, valuing our decision and actions as more “right” or more important than the decisions or actions of our spouse.

What we need in that moment isn’t a better marriage. What we need is to embrace the opportunity to marry in that moment.

In other words, what we need is to practice a method of resolving (read re-solve) the situation through communication. Since it is clear that I have solved the situation a certain way and she has solved it a different way—or that I have one opinion and she has another—then it becomes equally clear that on that particular issue, we now have an invitation to become married (again). This is nothing to freak out about, but something to verbally acknowledge so that the work of re-solving can produce the intimacy only the ongoing marrying of our two individual lives can bring.

The practice of re-solving marital issues revolves around learning to communicate well with your spouse. 

This takes practice. Two individuals are almost always terrible at this at first (so if you have hard time communicating with your spouse, give yourself some grace). But most unresolved issues in marriage stem around each person’s inability to effectively hear what the other person is saying, and more importantly why they are saying it. Quality communication begins not by being a good talker, but by becoming a great listener. Most importantly, Steph and I have discovered our primary goal isn’t “learning to be married” in a static sense so much as learning the art of marrying our own individual responses, desires, and efforts in any present moment. Marriage is a moment-by-moment kind of thing. I know that can sound pretty vague, so here’s an example:

When we have a conflict, it is most often caused by one of a few things—a difference in the way we see a certain situation, unspoken expectations that aren’t met, or general frustration at the way the other person has handled something. As we approach the problem at hand, we each have different ways of dealing with it (dictated by our past experiences, our temperaments and personalities and also our fears and wounds). This can really easily lead to tension, as we we each seek to solve the conflict in our own individualistic way; through our own lenses, valuing our decision and actions as more “right” or more important than the decisions or actions of our spouse.  What we need in that moment isn’t a better marriage. What we need is to embrace the opportunity to marry in that moment.

In other words, what we need is to practice a method of resolving (read re-solve) the situation through communication. Since it is clear that I have solved the situation a certain way and she has solved it a different way—or that I have one opinion and she has another—then it becomes equally clear that on that particular issue, we now have an invitation to become married (again). This is nothing to freak out about, but something to verbally acknowledge so that the work of re-solving can produce the intimacy only the ongoing marrying of our two individual lives can bring.

The practice of re-solving marital issues revolves around learning to communicate well with your spouse. This takes practice.

Two individuals are almost always terrible at this at first (so if you have hard time communicating with your spouse, give yourself some grace). But most unresolved issues in marriage stem around each person’s inability to effectively hear what the other person is saying, and more importantly why they are saying it. Quality communication begins not by being a good talker, but by becoming a great listener.

Steph and I now jokingly say that the first one of us to hear the other wins the argument.

Why?

Because is it only by focusing on what the other is saying, getting into their head, seeing the values that were driving their decisions and actions in the moment, can we finally get about the beauty of marrying our two individual worlds into a shared, exciting world of marriage.

This post was written by Jared Black.   You can find it in the free e-book, 25 Marriage Hacks.  For the free e-book, go to:  http://books.noisetrade.com/tylerward/marriage-hacks