Jesus Christ, as we know of Him knows, actually lives, ever minute detail of our lives. It is in His truce with God in our behalf that we are able to rely. Therein is the only answer to working out any difficulties intimate relational stresses may be experiencing. The way that happens is to trust Him in our partner. Not in some sort of personal individualistic self-determined holding to religious holiness… but in non-judgmental acknowledgement of who each of us is unto our mate in Christ’s mercy.

   Most importantly, when a man or woman uses a church or outreach ministry as an emotionally thoughtful substitute for attentions in faith unto God with their spouse, he or she is diverting God’s will to responsibly interact with a mate. Through reliance in a socially contrived replacement for marriage decisions, as if the word of solution authority resides in the faith of any house of worship or minister, makes the church or ‘personal guide’ into a type of surrogate Christ. Many people wonder what the antichrist spirit of deception is while accepting faithfulness in that same intrusion into their will of reverence.

   Retraction from doling out the sensibilities of married commitment to mental health practitioners, and/or clergy counselors, and/or the traumatic psycho-backbiting defensive/offensive territorial positioning affairs and meddling ‘concerned and caring’ non-members of a marriage may instill,  gives away the created honor of trust a man and woman share naturally and honestly with each other unto God. The vows of matrimony provide the true word of faith in God’s Word of promises in Christ as the only sure clearinghouse of redemptive reconciliation always readily available - no matter any worldly (or otherwise) intrusions into their lives.

   There are a lot of things going wrong in the world. Husbands who believe their wives are the core of their problems are seeing only a symptom of the real problem. Men are about the same when it comes to being afraid to let someone know the truth. Fear of rejection in the face of fear of rejection sustains a quarrel where men and women are both terrified in their heart of hearts (in different ways) about life in general. Often, our frustrations and irritations about our spouse are negative assumptions concerning their very attributes and qualities we most admire.

   Women know that men are responsible for their security. They are frightened about their existence because they know they have a life that matters. Men take advantage of women because they are easier to conquer than their job or the crazy things happening around them in the world. Women identify with and carry both roles of wife and husband to take over the responsibility for their own security in hope to compensate for the men misjudging their role. This causes men to resent women in a way that reinforces the independence of the women.

Men and women like to use each other.

   Men know that women are responsible for their security. They are frightened about their existence because they know they have a life that matters. Women take advantage of men because they are easier to conquer than their job or the crazy things happening around them in the world. Men identify with and carry both roles of husband and wife to take over the responsibility for their own security to compensate for the women misjudging their role. This causes women to resent men in a way that reinforces the independence of the men.

Women and men like to hold each other responsible.

The differences can be thought of this way:

   A man exercises the 'defender' role for a woman. A woman exercises the 'keeper' role for a man. Together, defense and keeping is shared as the woman shares in her husband’s defense of their unity, while the man shares in his wife’s keeping of their unity, because they have a union. When unmarried couples, boyfriends and girlfriends, do not have a commitment and use the togetherness of a union without the commitment of marriage, there is a clash between the absolute permanence of a bond and the strained tension of no bond of meaningful permanence. The confusion of enjoyed fruits of permanent togetherness, without the committed promises intimate activity means, causes an underlying frustration, anger, resentment, and disappointment that looks for reasons to express the fears of giving one's all when it might mean nothing.

   This is backwards because the fears of the risks of losing choice (the seeming freedom of individuality and independence), through the turnstile of permanent decision, have already harmed the same respect and dignity of actions permanent decision represents by indulging in those actions.  Usually this loss is compensated for by turning to tangible items of sentimental possession (personal achievement - what one likes whether it is experience or things; music, dancing, eating, sleeping, working all are connected to money to buy a music player, clothes, jewelry, food, house, furniture...) to symbolize unseen indecisiveness.

   The value of a gift to another that appeals to what they like to expect is thought of as the expression of how much another cares because the respect and decency of the person has been lost to what anyone can or cannot do with what they have. When it is realized the focus on experiences and things as forms of identity does not address the underlying reality of a missing sense of worth, that the desire to have is overshadowing the desire to become one with another, the distance from an established peace of security is increased to where people believe their existence is validated by the world around them.

   If a man or woman is clinging to another in opposition to his or her marriage, the other is also clinging to the clinging in ways that reinforce the error, as if rightful validation, of both’s enmeshed bondage. Solidifying this distorted plying of intimate dependency is the sense of permanence one may experience with the inability to unsteal what has been stolen. Fear of reprisal by a spouse, projecting one’s fear of ungodly betrayal out from God’s hands of mercy onto the inadequate ability a spouse has to deal with such hardship, there comes emotional barriers to reconciliation in one’s properly sanctified place of redemption under the authority of Christ through the marriage vow promises.

   Experiences and things are replacements for acceptance of positional trust and the material blessings together efforts spur married camaraderie to appreciate. It is a misconception that a man or woman matters as a person if they get what they want; provided that what is wanted is self-serving rather than shared joy.  The self deceptive ambush that turns proper yearning for fulfillment into a craving of greed is; a man or woman can be giving their wife or husband exactly what tells them they matter more than anything else only to find them furious with the gift because it does not reply to the emotionally material desire.

   The reason many people rather want to be validated by things is the conflict of selfishness over shared things. To depend on another person to care for them in a right way, without using them for their own personal props, is confusing because people tend to be takers instead of grateful givers. When a giver and a taker are together, a taker will always take and a giver will always give - to the end that there is nothing left to give to the taker. At the same time, the giver is a taker in a different way and the taker is a giver in a different way - so that also appears to come to ruin. That is because the understood purposes of togetherness for loving embrace are out of balance.

   Certainly, a single man and a single woman are not practiced and adept at the tasks of giving in the fullness of married harmony, even though the concept is partially understood. When there is a past pattern of intimate dating where the activities of marriage are engaged in without marriage, there is an almost irresistible impulse to regard a spouse as suspiciously under scrutiny. The emotionally damaged will feel like getting away as he or she has done before - because the noticing of error is a reminder of how they have ran to escape their own damaging mistakes. This is where imperfections are hidden from the other and motives become skewed.

   It is not that the two people just "don't get along" and need to find someone “new” to get along with, they already have each other. It is that they both care so very much about wanting the best that they beat each other up trying to figure out how to make it work. The problem is that trying to make it work is the problem. It is already working, but life, in its hardships and difficulties, is not easy. When people are disappointed they tell their partner about it, naturally – but in an indirect way that minimizes their own errors in order to find a sense of positive worthiness that reflects the goodness they believe their mate found attractive in them to begin with.

   Attempts to escape troubles this way causes a dishonest covering of the precise humble honesty of inadequacy reality holds for everyone. We are not perfect and the conflicts arise when our partner wishes they could make it better and misunderstands to think the sharing of grief over a situation is blaming us for being the problem. Then, as ideas about having made a mistake in judgment about the circumstances are transferred to ideas about the choice of spouse being the mistake, it is easy to consider that someone else may be easier to deal with.

   Of course, that is when the fight starts… contrary attitudes, oppositional views, and transferring the load of failure to our life partner causes a sense of elated false dignity. Chronic complaining in the guise of compassionate concern is a self-motivated cover of manipulation, role-playing legitimate indignation over evil difficulties, to get from others what God has already supplied – if He were to be obediently asked. Impressions of self defensive safeguards tear apart the actual protections Godly defenses against evil are created. God is not in the business of straining things until they break, and then calling the separation good. People do that.

   Using quicksand as an analogy is fitting to see how personal relationship is an example witness of soul salvation.  Because His plan is no one should be lost, God does not hold us responsible for the errors we cause while flailing about mired in the quicksand of evil influences. Our Rescuer, Jesus Christ, did the pulling out work for us so that we may rely in Him to keep us on firm ground, free in His strength to carry us from being sucked under the surface.

   People hold other people responsible for their sinking troubles (categorized as “past mistakes”) by thinking a person, rather than sinister contrary inhuman entities, are knocking them into sand traps and trying to pull them under. Countless people intentionally, and repeatedly, jump back into the quicksand and yell out to be rescued again simply because they enjoy the experience – the personal attentions another rescuer perhaps will give.

   As a conquest loses its freshness of promise – because an ill conceived joining will always eventually uncover its deceptions - the lost glow of initial discovery combines with guilt to compel a person to reject the sinful union by rejecting the person of accomplice. However, the rejection is no rejection because the identity and nature of knowing the spirit and soul of the other remains. Then another person is found to take the place left open by the previous. The essence of influence of the subverted authority to wrongfully accept the interlacing of others with ones self becomes a compulsion to repeat the process.

   A person forgets who he or she is and becomes a role-playing manipulator of others to fulfill any whim and desire the idolatrous eyes can conjure. If these person’s marry, they are carrying their mixed identities into a defiling of the marriage bed. Comparisons in union are impossible to avoid and corrupt the celebration of oneness at the very point of integrity. Memories of others live on because the sin lives in the knowledge. The only way to remove the spiritual soul presence of the others, and it is very heart rending and difficult, is to fully confess the secret sins of fornication and adultery and to ask for forgiveness.

   There will be times when memories will spur an individual into fantasy. This is exactly when the matter should be honestly shared and purged from the marriage. The husband and wife must honor the name of the marriage, the family of the name, and the Wholeness of Christ through His resurrection if they are to find the authority of the truth of wholesome vitality in their marriage. Darkness, and its influence, shrink and dissolve away as the light of Truth, through repentance, shines forth.

   God provided an inherent need in people to depend on each other unto Him. This is apparent in a curious blessing; Where we are skilled in helping others usually is where we need the most help ourselves. Need, as desire, is why we care enough to fight. As a people, we are fighting evil by fighting other people as if they are the evil when they are not. However, we can turn our rue into woo. There is nothing to cover, good or bad and right or wrong, between a man and woman who are married. A man, for his wife’s sake, may take interest in what pleases her whether he is opposed to what she enjoys or not, giving her the opportunities to be honestly trustworthy. And, a woman may do the same for her husband.

   When a man or woman listens to another not their mate either one is denying the word of faith through their spouse to overcome difficulties they are married to overcome. Confiding in another aligns perspectives to perceptions in and through a different walk of order unto God that cannot be His course of decisions and actions, because those decisions are based in judging and condemning a man’s wife or a woman’s husband according to alternative purposes. God expects others to respect that a particular man and woman are called through their marriage to produce responses to His Word through their word to each other. Only the man and woman of a marriage together can truly know what their marriage is about. It is not anyone else’s place to say.

   Since the division and separation (betrayal of trust) in turning to others for physical, financial, emotional, and religious support severely increases aggravations that arose because of secrecy over personal fears and pains, the tendency is to assume the “marriage is not working” because others are keeping it from working through their inconvenient interest and involvement. But, the marriage is still a marriage with authority in Christ against intrusive opinions and activities from and by others. And, the vows of promise are still in God’s realm of honor to be honored. His answer to a complicated mess like this is simple: The man and woman are in an ongoing faithful position unto God in spirit, no matter the temporal materialistic happenings present, to listen to each other to make the decisions of living.

   The solution is simply for the woman to be with her husband and the man to be with his wife – and for everyone else to keep their mouth and hands out of imposing upon them their influences and will. Work to defend, not your self against your spouse, but each other in acceptance of everything you may be at any given time. Married men and women battle with each other because they care enough about their well-being to defend themselves. They are battling their shared difficulties brought about by the circumstances of the world and its ways contrary to faith and trust - not the person to whom they are married. It isn't that a disagreement is a chasm of difference; it is that a disagreement is an expression of concern – a challenging project to find answers our Creator has for us we do not foresee.

   Fear of success is the same as the fear of failure because the fear that drives motivational pressures to succeed, attempt fruitlessly to counteract internal aggravations – simply because material ambition requires fear to function. However, positive motivation is not a fear driven compensation for insufficiency since it is based in faithful expectations in response to the sure promises of God – in answer to the promises we make to each other. So, 'what' we do is not where carelessness betrays expectations, the 'what' of matters is in judgmental barriers against open honesty, in all a man and woman are, when married. We can take care of what we know about and there is no sin in sneaking… provided there is no sneaking.

   A man grants his wife, through their vows of unconditional promise to each other and God: “For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”, in faith. Because all faith is drawn from Christ’s gift to us, as a measure of His faith on our behalf, He allows us ongoing decisions in following Him. Likewise, since a woman is unto a man as the church is unto Him, a man allows his wife her ongoing decisions in following him, with respect to the church unto faith in Christ, as a woman allows the same for her husband. A man cleaves to carrying his wife while his wife cleaves to being carried by her husband. The call of salvation that brings grace and mercy of redemption to our hearts, souls, minds, bodies, and spirits supplies the Good News of the Gospel in accepting everything in, of, and about our spouse; right, wrong, good, bad, and indifferent in reflection of God’s example to us.

   The authority over a man’s body belongs to his wife, for God’s sake, because He holds their permanent vows in tribute. His authority in respect for their authority in Him, over a wife’s body, belongs to her husband – and the other way around. The choosing of will each has facing the moments of a day is fully accepted by the other for the sake of commitment, personal caring, and free will to do as one wishes with respect to God’s plan by the call of redemption. Healthy companionship in the practicing process of allowing our spouse to openly want and do what they will is true relationship in communication because everything is in, of, and by faith in the Word of God. Trust in acceptance alleviates our fears of betrayal and works our patience in faith-action to see the course we have in pact with our loving and understanding Creator.

   The key is openness: As long as a man and a woman keep each other genuinely informed about their activities; who they married each other as, and to be (who they are at any given time), is fully honored through their vows – whether or not either agrees with or specifically approves particular activities.  Intercession is the core – each of the two is comprised of both and is able to intercede for the other. When there are difficulties we wish our spouse to avoid, instead of embrace, the load of responsibility carried by both naturally unto God, as He is recognized to honor our promises to each other, loses the condemnation of evil through the open honesty of sharing, and is nobody else’s business.

   Our behavioral quirks become an appreciated joy rather than a chaotic curse. Sin is a part of every day for everyone and cannot be avoided, Romans chapter 7; and any hidden matter is an attempt to hide sin and negates our mercy and grace for eternal life, James chapter 5. It is straight forward, simple, and no mystery or magically applied formula, but life is in the balance. God is not a God of concealing; God is a God of revealing and, according to Scripture, does not condemn us.

   Faith in the covering of sin is not an action to conceal acts of betrayal to vows – that would allow an unfaithful sense of false justified secrecy. Faith in action, accountably exercising tolerance in the face of transparent honesty, is the gift of love that continually provides salvation and healing. It cleanses away the fear of discovery as long as privacy protection is kept within the confidence of marriage. God is a God of acceptance through respect, grace, and understanding – when we are married, we openly recognize responsibility in dedicated faith, regarding everything about our mate because we are of each other.

   As we rely in Him to work, in our joint married lives, His spirit of living in a day, we can allow His freedom of confidence in our spouse to lovingly abide seeming immorality, no matter what may be the concern. Permanence is not found by breaking to eliminate ills. Permanence is found in mending… to eliminate ills. The greatest expression of His concern is ever present with us in our realization of living itself, as a gift from God, in an astonishing active expression of our appreciation of the time we are given not to waste. Therefore, there is no circumstance or hardship that is beyond our capacity in honoring our place in life.

2 Corinthians 2:1-11