3 Anchors Of An Emotionally Healthy Marriage
3 Anchors Of An Emotionally Healthy Marriage
By Bradley Bennett
Culture seems more confused about what makes a marriage work than ever before. If you turn on Netflix or read something online, it will probably tell you about passion or finding “the spark”. As if a thriving, fulfilling marriage happens spontaneously and you just stumble upon it one day.
The longer Amanda and I are married, the more I truly understand how untrue that is. You don’t just find a thriving marriage on sale at the store. Instead, It’s like a tree that requires the right nutrients and water in order to grow and thrive.
Over the past few years, we’ve found that one area which needs constant attention is the emotional health of our marriage. Without ongoing vigilance and work, it’s easy for our relationship to become “emotionally unhealthy”. Allowing things like worry, anger, and emotional distance to creep into our marriage and stifle love.
In order to protect the emotional health of our marriage, Amanda and I rely on 3 principles that we call “anchors”. We’re not perfect, things still pop up and we have to right the ship, but these anchors act as guidelines that help us foster the emotional health our marriage needs to grow.
My hope is that you would understand how we’re pursuing an emotionally healthy marriage and would desire it for your relationship, too!
Correct Priorities
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” ~ Matthew 6:33
If you stay around The Us Equation community for any amount of time, you’ll find Amanda and I believe that an “Us” Marriage requires a commitment to put God first. Understanding that our marriage is ultimately submitted to Him.
Seeking His kingdom and taking responsibility for our personal walk with Him is our first priority. We seek first His commands, presence, and righteousness in our own lives before anything else. As it says in Matthew, when we do this, “all these things”, including a fulfilling marriage, will be added to us.
You see, there is a correct order we were designed to follow. Once we follow it, then we are able to love our spouse in even greater ways and experience the fulfillment that marriage was designed for. Let me explain.
When we prioritize a thriving relationship with God first, we are able to take the love we experience from Him and reflect it back to our spouse. It’s our quiet place with the lord, when prioritized correctly, that becomes the source of strength we desperately need to love our spouse well.
Your spouse was never designed to be your #1 priority. When we put them before our relationship with Christ, we are actually making them an idol in our life. We are making them the source of our life and short circuiting the designed order created by God.
On top of this, setting your spouse as your #2 means that God comes first, but nothing else comes before them. Healthy marriages don’t prioritize anything, other than God, above each other. Not work, not hobbies, not the kids… nothing else.
Having the correct priorities anchors emotional health in our marriage by maintaining the healthy order of things. We submit everything, including our marriage, to God’s authority and then operate from a place of strength because we are filled with his presence, love, and grace.
Pray Together Regularly
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” ~Philippians 4:6-7
It took Amanda and I some time before we understood the power of praying together. We both had a strong prayer life separately, but I earnestly wish we had been more intentional about this sooner.
The peace that praying together has brought into our marriage has been, as it says in Philippians, beyond understanding. This simple act has helped us close the door on a lot of anxiety that used to be in our marriage.
We quickly found that it’s hard to have emotional health when we’re constantly dealing with anxiety and stress because they eat away at our emotional margin. Emotionally we were both like a frayed rope that was ready to snap at any moment.
Living like this makes it impossible to have the patience needed for emotional health. Instead, we need to remove stress and anxiety in our marriage through praying together. This introduces peace into our life which adds emotional margin, giving us the ability to be patient.
Amanda and I have a simple rule, we don’t worry, instead we come together and pray. If either of us has something that’s causing worry, we bring it up and ask for prayer.
We make time for prayer regularly and it brings the peace of God into our marriage, helping to anchor emotional health by giving us the margin and patience we need.
Read more about how we fight for a marriage of peace here.
Process Negative Emotions Quickly
“Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.” ~Ephesians 4:26-27
Contrary to what you may believe, being angry is actually not a sin but a normal emotion we will all experience in our marriage. How we deal with that anger is where things can go wrong.
Negative emotions like anger are usually a gauge that there’s something causing you frustration in your relationship. This is actually a good thing, but only if you work to process through it with your spouse. Letting it simmer will allow it to become toxic.
Emotionally healthy marriages identify anger and deal with it in a godly way. They process through it quickly so that it can’t linger and poison their marriage.
Processing through negative emotions starts by speaking up and using what we call “constructive complaining”. Knowing how to initiate loving conversations with each other about what is frustrating us has been a game changer for Amanda and I.
Give your spouse the grace to express their frustrations and be willing to talk through it with them. Do the required work to process through, and then remove, anger and other negative emotions from your marriage.
The problem comes when we refuse to talk about our frustrations, letting the anger simmer and eventually turn toxic. Anchor emotional health in your marriage by processing through these negative emotions and removing the toxins that can potentially cause issues later on.
Conclusion
The emotional health of our marriage is something Amanda and I take seriously. We understand that without it, we will not have the underlying strength to build a fulfilling “Us” Marriage.
Even though we’re constantly growing in this area, we’ve found each of these anchors help us maintain emotional health in our marriage. As we continue to lean into them, we are seeing the overall health of our marriage grow. We are more patient, peaceful, and Christ-like in our love towards each other.
Which of these anchors would you most like to add to your marriage?