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A Marriage Masterpiece

by Mike Constantine

What color would you use to describe passion? Walk through the romance section at any bookstore. You’ll find yourself surrounded by shades of purple and red. Each cover advertises the passions waiting for you on its pages. They use a lot of silky legs and bared male torsos, too.

Publishers know their customers well. Many people hunger for sexual passion. Some read such books to prime what little passion they have, or to replace a passion lost or never experienced.

Red and purple have their place, but in marriage, that palette is far too limited. Marital passion does include sex, but only as a part of a much broader picture.

If I were painting a marriage, I would use many colors to express passion. Bright yellows for those glorious days that glow with life.  Shades of green to show the growth and life that passion brings. I would even add some browns and greys – colors that represent the usual days with their down-to-earth duties and quiet endurance, a background showcasing life in all its hues.

And, I think I would need a little black, too. Black, like the darkness that surrounds us when a loved one is ill. Black, like the despondency that chokes us when life is unfair. Black, like the fear we feel when we must make a major decision, but have no idea what to do.

One master painter, Ver Meer, had a genius for the use of white. Combined with his amazing perception of light, his whites gave his paintings luminance, as though they had some hidden source for their radiance. Yes, I would add white to my marriage painting, to represent the hidden radiance that lights up all healthy marriages and makes them shine. You have seen it, and when you see it you wish for it.

In marriage, passion is far more than romance and sex. Passion is a deep, abiding desire to experience a lasting, satisfying, edifying marriage. That’s why you need so many colors to portray it. Passion is much more than emotion. Popular culture never separates the two. In that fantasy world, passion equals emotion. In real life, passion can motivate us even when our emotions feel flat.

The core for this kind of passion – the force that keeps it throbbing in a marriage, comes from a combination of commitment and determination. I love to see that in couples. I know that with those qualities, and some patience and forbearance, they will paint a mural of great and subtle beauty.

Sadly,  some marriages seem to lack color. It’s as though the couple never learned how to make all the moments, with all their hues, part of their painting. They exist. But do they live?

I watched a man of eighty-eight, still healthy, caring for his wife, who has Parkinson’s Disease. They are all out of red and purple. They know that the time for those colors has passed. But how they paint! In kind words and thoughtful actions, I watch them love each other. Even black days have points of light where their love shines through.

In marriage, we paint by moments on a canvas of days. Our brushes are actions and words. Our colors are attitudes. Stroke by stroke, dot by dot, the painting grows. Each husband, each wife, adds to the canvas. And each canvas can become a masterpiece.


This is the last article in the Growing a Great Marriage Series. You may want to return to the English Home page to see what other materials are available.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: commitment, determination, passion

Intimacy Lost

by Mike Constantine

Robert and Freda met at university. Eventually they decided they had what it takes to make a good marriage. Everyone who knew them thought so too, so after graduation they married.

Love began dying during their first year of marriage, but they hardly noticed it. Like many couples, they allowed their careers (both were lawyers) to consume their lives, leaving little time for each other.

Strangely, their courtship years had been just as busy, maybe more. Love flourished, even in a typhoon of exams and research papers. In those days their relationship gave them relief from the stresses of school work. Now their marriage had become just one more drain on their time and energy.

It didn’t help when Freda, feeling lonely, developed a close friendship with her young, male piano teacher. The friendship was apparently innocent, but potentially dangerous. There was a certain excitement and tenderness that she missed with her husband. And laughter! Freda enjoyed the bright humor of her piano teacher. Definitely dangerous, especially for a woman in Freda’s situation.

When someone told Robert about the friendship, he ordered Freda to stop her piano lessons and never see the teacher again. Of course he was within his rights, but he didn’t address the deeper, underlying issue. He should have asked Freda why she felt she needed that friendship. He didn’t. Instead, he became indignant and self-righteous, acting wounded.

Robert did another thing. He stopped trusting Freda. He became more controlling, less understanding, and more distant. When trust died, so did intimacy. Somehow they managed to have three children, but their marriage deteriorated. Talk became trivial; avoidance became commonplace

Covering Up the Emptiness

How does a couple maintain a marriage in such circumstances? It seems impossible, yet many couples do. They stay together because of pressures from family or society. They stay together through fear of what others would think if they divorce. They stay together because of the children, or to avoid losing face.

But they don’t stay together because they love, honor, value, and enjoy each another. Love is lost, and with it all joy. These couples maintain their marriage the same way doctors maintain a terminally ill patient. They sustain life, but do not, or cannot, heal the disease.

It’s snowing as I write this section. Snow is beautiful and has the wonderful ability to cover the ugliest things, making them look clean and white. A pile of rubbish can look pure and pristine when enough snow falls on it. Unfortunately the camouflage has a short life. Snow melts. When it does, the rubbish pile is still there, still dirty and still ugly.

Some couples have tried for years to cover up the rubbish in their relationships and their lives. But covering doesn’t mean removing. To get rid of it, you have to admit the problem exists and find a good, godly way to address it.

Why do we sidestep the issues that are hurting our marriages? Often it is because we don’t think we can find solutions. Or, if we find a solution, we are afraid won’t have what it takes to carry it out. Sometimes we don’t face the problems because we don’t want to admit that we, personally, need to change our attitudes and actions. Positive change has a price, true, but it is so worth whatever it costs us personally.

Lacking any other encouraging alternative, we try to find fulfillment by staying busy. We involve ourselves in activities that we hope will fill the emptiness. All that activity dulls our minds like a narcotic, but it doesn’t feed our souls.

We feed our soul, the inner person, through intimate friendships with our spouses, our children, our companions, and most of all, our God. Without intimacy, we experience increasing emptiness.

Have you experienced a loss of intimacy? If so, just one question: Will you try to recover it? If you do, both you and your spouse will become stronger, healthier people, experiencing the healing, restoring benefits of true intimacy.

The Three Ds

Remember that restoring intimacy takes work, like all rewarding endeavors. I am not much of a gardener, but when I see a beautiful garden I know three things:

  • The gardener desires that garden, for desire is the beginning point of all beauty.
  • The gardener has a design for that garden. Beautiful gardens begin with a concept. How do we want this garden to look? What kind of fruits and flowers do we want to enjoy? Desire without design is nothing but an empty dream, a fantasy without hope of reality.
  • The gardener has great determination. Near our house lives a man with a lovely garden. The trees and flowers are arranged in such a manner that they invite you to linger and refresh your soul for a few moments. It is not surprising, therefore, to see that man working in his garden. He may not always love the work, but he surely loves the results. You will, too!

It is my hope that these words from Calvin Coolidge will become your words, too:

” We are beginning to comprehend more definitely, what course should be pursued, what remedies ought to be applied, what actions should be taken for our deliverance, and are clearly manifesting a determined will faithfully and conscientiously to adopt these methods of relief.”

Think, Act, Pray

1. How many different causes can you find for Robert and Freda losing intimacy?

2. What would have helped Robert and Freda renew their intimacy?

3. If you see a loss of intimacy in your marriage, what are you doing that is contributing to the loss?

4. What is keeping you from beginning to restore intimacy in your marriage?

5.If you did restore intimacy, what positive results would you see?

6. Take some time to evaluate your desire, design, and determination.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: design, desire, determination, emptiness, intimacy

The Three Ds

by Mike Constantine

What Do We Want Our Marriage To Be?

To understand the importance of preparation, consider a garden. When you see a beautiful garden you know that the gardeners have three qualities: desire, design, and determination. With only one or two of the three, beautiful gardens never happen. They certainly aren’t automatic. No gardener will leave the process to chance, because chance has never produced ordered beauty.

Loving, lasting marriages are the same. They don’t happen automatically. So let’s consider those Three Ds.

Desire:
1. Please answer Yes or No: Both of us expect this marriage to last the rest of our lives. Do you have any reservations about your answer?

Design:
1. Think of a marriage you greatly admire. What qualities (characteristics) do you see in that marriage that you would want to have in your own marriage?

 

2. What qualities have you seen in other marriages that you never want to see in your marriage?

 

Determination:
Determination means persistent effort for positive results.

1. Thinking again about the marriage you said you greatly admire, how do you think the couple built that marriage?

 

2. Would other people think of you as a determined person?

3. Is the person you are planning to marry a determined person? How do you know that?

 

4. What are some goals you have reached through determination? What kept your determination strong?

 

5. Is determination ever a bad quality? Is it the same as stubbornness?

 

6. What are some of the greatest challenges you have overcome? Write some down and talk about them this week with each other.

 

7. Is the goal of a strong and lasting marriage important to you right now?

8. Do you believe it will always be important?

9. What could cause that goal to become less important to you?

 

10. What can you do to make sure that a strong and lasting marriage is always important to you?

 

— Remember: What we neglect will decay. What we nurture will develop.—

Filed Under: Preparing to Succeed Tagged With: design, desire, determination

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