Secret #10: Look Higher
Author note: This is one of a series giving a sneak peek into what I discovered about what makes happy marriages so happy! After years of nationally-representative research with more than 1,000 couples, I reveal the twelve most important little habits in The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages: The Little Things That Make a Big Difference. See www.surprisingsecrets.com for more!
Secret #10:
If you want a highly happy marriage, don’t look to marriage or your spouse for happiness –since that is something they cannot deliver. Instead, look higher, and put God at the center of your marriage, focusing on Him for fulfillment and the selflessness to build a great relationship.
When I did the research for my book, For Parents Only, I was fascinated to find that the happiest kids were not the ones whose parents put them (the kids) first. Instead, while the parents clearly loved and were attentive to their children, they were looking higher: They put their marriage and the whole family first.
I found an interesting parallel in this research with the highly happy couples. These couples weren’t putting their marriage first: they were looking higher. In large numbers, they told me they were putting God at the center of their marriages.
That wouldn’t have surprised me if I’d only interviewed and surveyed people in church environments — but I purposefully talked to people outside those environments in order to make sure I interviewed people who, statistically, might not believe in God. But they kept bringing Him up! The happy couples said prioritizing God first gave them a deeper sense of security in their marriage. Both because they relied on His power to be selfless when they didn’t want to be (!) and because they knew looking to God instead of their spouse took the pressure off their mate.
We all know how tempting it is to look to our spouse to make us happy. But think about it: would we want the reverse? Do we want our spouse to depend on us for our happiness? No way! I, for one, know how imperfect and often selfish I am, and I know I would fail miserably if Jeff depended on me to make him happy. That would end up making both of us pretty miserable.
Similarly, the happiest couples realized that that sort of pressure would ruin them, and ruin the marriage. Many of them, in fact, had found that their marriage was nearly ruined by doing exactly that – and so they decided to do something differently.
They stopped looking to marriage (or their mate) for the fulfillment that only God can deliver. They started taking their frustrations and needs to God, first. (One wife told me she would say, “God, give me your love for my spouse, because I just aint feelin’ it right now! If divorce isn’t acceptable, would murder be okay?”) Some couples started praying together. Other couples didn’t pray together very often, but would simply let each other know that they were praying about something separately. No matter what they did, though, they had a sense of relying on God to carry their marriage.
And as a result, these couples found they didn’t have to worry about being “strong enough” to weather the storms of life. Because they knew their hope and strength ultimately came from God.
From Chapter 11 of The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages, by Shaunti Feldhahn.