When couples first enter the super-charged waters of struggling with strong differences, they can feel bewildered and overwhelmed at learning how to relate to one individual on earth so deeply. They can feel that the task of getting along is insurmountable. A key tool the enemy uses is to keep the couple isolated, thinking that their situation is worse than that of 3 billion other marriages.
Isolation from any other thought—living in the prison of one idea, trapped in our own internal mental mulling—is counter-productive. Rolling around only our own spin about the situation in our heads, over and over (like sucking on hard candy), is the enemy's finest artillery. He strives to keep the couple disconnected from finding out that others struggle, too.
The Enemy of our souls keeps the couple from thinking that marriage books would be helpful, and he makes it conveniently inconvenient to go to the effort of attending marriage seminars and workshops. And when they go to view helpful marriage YouTubes, he works hard at distracting them, convincing them to watch other YouTube clips on more seemingly urgent subjects. And by all means, he suggests that they don't get marital counseling—that is for really troubled marriages—getting them each to think it is better to smolder about one's own troubles by oneself.
Conversely, the great comfort of the Holy Spirit, the helper of our soul, is to show us how universal marital troubles are. The dominant emotion of marriage seminars is laughter. Why? Because each couple looks around the room and realizes that all of the men are feeling this way and all of the women are identifying with this concept, etc. Thus the couple begins to relax within their dilemmas, and breaks out of their trips around the barn.
Conversation in all directions helps restore perspective, grants insights, and diffuses pressure. By all means, seek wisdom from older good strong marriages, and read the experts. There are enormous repositories of help out there in the big, wide, wide world...a veritable store house of relational GPS's.
For a lively and practical book on this topic, written by a wife for wives, read Renee's Wise Womanly Ways to Grow Your Marriage.
