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If You Want a Good Marriage
Dr. Monte Wilson

If you want to be a good spouse
You must first be a good friend
If you want to be a good friend,
You must first be a good son or daughter

Simple wisdom: and, as with all things simple, quite profound.

Healthy relationships are built on foundations of healthy relationships.

It begins with my relationship with God and my parents. If these relationships aren’t right, then all other relationships suffer. Who is God to me? What is God to me? How do I know him, express my love for him, worship him, and etc.? Do I see God as a distant uncaring uncle, a grumpy old grandfather, Santa Clause, a tyrant, or the Father Who Is Love and Light? And even if I see him as my heavenly Father, do I actually relate to him as such?

If I care about my earthly relationships, then I must make my relationship with God a priority: I must spend concentrated time increasing in knowledge and love for him. To the degree that my relationship with God is unhealthy, immature, or even dysfunctional, to that same degree my earthly relationships will be unhealthy, immature and even dysfunctional. This is one of the reasons why friends and loved ones should encourage one another to maintain their relationships with God, encourage one another to get alone with him, and to be involved in a God-directed God-worshiping spiritual community: if it breaks down here, it breaks down everywhere.

If I want healthy relationships with friends and loved ones, I also must first have healthy relationships with my parents and siblings. You can tell a lot about a person by how they relate to and talk about their parents. People who trash their parents will pretty much do the same to their friends and loved ones. People who have a healthy relationship with their family will most always take that love and wisdom into their other relationships. People who have dysfunctional relationships with their families will usually have dysfunctional relationships outside their families. Not always…but usually.

And just as friends and family will encourage you to spend time with God, maintaining a healthy relationship, so too will they encourage you to maintain a healthy relationship with your family. Friends and loved ones who get all proprietary and possessive, wishing to cut off your relationships with God and family…well, lets just say that, at best they are short sighted and, at worse, relational vampires.

As God is in every aspect perfect, if there is anything “wrong” in my relationship with him, the fault will be mine! However, with our earthly parents, it gets more complicated. Realizing that some parents can be a mess of disorders and dysfunctions, I understand that we cannot always have a healthy relationship with them. However, we can have a healthy perspective and approach to them. If they were and are abusive, we may have to keep our distance, but this shouldn’t stop us from having forgiveness in our hearts for them if-and-when they ever ask for it. And it also shouldn’t stop us from praying for God’s best in their lives.

If a healthy relationship with your parents is not possible, it would be wise to develop a relationship with an older couple or couples that can be there for you in ways your parents should have. Maybe an aunt and uncle, or some people in your spiritual community could fill in the gap here? Anyway, if I am all messed up here, I can pretty much bet the farm that my other relationships will suffer.

How many people do you know who were loners, relational isolationists, who have a healthy marriage? Not many, if any. I constantly told our children that if they began getting romantically serious about some guy or lady, check out their friendships and families. How long have they maintained their friendships? How is their relationship with their families? If friends come and go like the seasons of the year, you can be certain they do not know how to maintain a healthy relationship…and usually this can be traced back to their relationship with God and/or family.

With our son-in-laws, one of the things my wife and I watched out for, when they were still potential son-in-laws, was how they supported our daughter’s relationships with God, family and friends. If they were unsupportive or, worse, jealous of these other relationships, danger signals would have gone off. Gratefully, each of these men was not only supportive but also was encouraging in this regard. “Of course I want to go to church with you…yes, by all means, go hang out with your family, go see your friends.” And this was true even when they were “her” friends and not “his” friends. They didn’t know it, but this is one of the attributes that impressed their future father-in-law the most!

Many couples think the best way to keep their relationships on track is to immerse themselves in one another. While this may be true in some cases for a short while, overall it will actually lead the couple in the opposite direction of health and happiness. A healthy marital relationship requires all other relationships to be healthy, as well.

Healthy relationship with God and family + healthy relationships with friends = (usually) healthy marriage.