Heading For A Marriage Crash

It happened again this week. Someone I looked up to, someone who seemed to have a nearly perfect home. They were so good together, had good jobs, a nice house, great kids.Now a total marriage meltdown. It started with a line that was crossed.I’m not going to solve all marriage problems in a single post. There’s probably more books sold on this topic than any other. And I could give you a list of things to do here that would help improve your marriage and also help protect you from an affair. But I’m just going to give you one thing. If you stick to this one thing, if you and your spouse never cross this line, your chances of seeing your marriage destroyed by an affair are minuscule, and it is highly unlikely that your marriage will end in a divorce.Because in every affair, there is a line that is crossed, and when it is crossed, the guilty party often doesn’t have a clue what happened. And yet, in my nearly thirty years of pastoring, in every affair I’ve been familiar with, this line has been crossed. And when this line was crossed, the affair was well on its way. But if this boundary is set in place and both spouses honor it, affairs simply don’t happen. There may be many more improvements that need to be made in the marriage, but without crossing this line, marital faithfulness is protected.Here’s that line: Speaking critically of your spouse behind their back, particularly to someone of the opposite sex.In every affair I have known (you’ll also find this consistent with research conducted on affairs in all circles), one of the guilty parties began confiding in an opposite sex coworker, neighbor or friend from the past, regarding their marriage problems, which led to a false sense of intimacy, and not long after, infidelity.When you criticize your spouse behind their back to anybody, that, in and of itself, is an act of unfaithfulness. If you are one to slam your wife to your buddies at work, or rag on your man with your girlfriends on your night out, the division that may already exist between you will only be cemented in your mind and you’ve now given yourself permission to betray his/her confidence to speak of them in a way that you know would be hurtful. You might view it as a small betrayal, but it is a betrayal nonetheless. And small betrayals lead to big betrayals.I’ve never known a marriage meltdown, affair or other, where this line was not first crossed. And I’ve never known a healthy marriage where this line was being crossed.If you are really true to your spouse, you will be true to them in your speech. If you are willing to betray them with your words, you are likely to someday betray them with your actions.So maybe you need some help in your marriage. Maybe a good book is in order (“The Meaning of Marriage” by Tim Keller or “You And Me Forever” by Francis Chan) to read together, or perhaps you should look into The Bridge’s marriage mentoring program. But above all, start here. Start with the way you talk about your spouse when they are not around. Do not divulge things that are private (including marriage struggles) or say demeaning or critical things about your spouse. That may not solve your marriage problems, but at the least, it will keep them from getting bigger.