Shatterproof your marriage

The Shatterproof Marriage

I’ve been reading a book recently called Shatterproof Your Marriage, by John Eckenwiler. Overall it’s a great book, which fits with many of the ideas on our website. In particular, it emphasises the important of having the right foundations for your marriage, and how to work on improving those foundations.

Three foundations are suggested, which are claimed to be the three elements every marriage must have to become ‘shatterproof’.

The right character

The right kind of love

The right spirit

The book then goes on to describe exactly what this means – in quite a lot of detail. In fact, there were so many things that seemed to be involved in having a shatterproof marriage that I started to feel overwhelmed, and felt like giving up right there and then! To give you some idea, here are some key attitudes involved in having the ‘right character’.

• See opportunity in adversity and expect positive things
• All things are possible
• Be willing to face pain
• It’s important to look at yourself honestly
• Giving to others is more important than serving yourself
• Be aware and in control of your emotions
• Do the helpful thing even if you don’t feel like it
• Do whatever it takes to address issues, challenging yourself to behave differently if needed
• Admit your weaknesses as a matter of habit
• Value the things that will last beyond your lifetime
• Work on personality growth whenever and wherever needed
• Invest the effort to learn from past experiences
• Contribute your best to the marriage
• Be open to changing your expectations
• Develop a clear sense of your obligations to your marriage and live up to them
• Be honest about how real your belief in God is
• Give up any sense of entitlement that is selfish
• Be willing to admit what your behaviour is really saying
• Be open to changing your values
• Base happiness on the things that are lasting

Overwhelming isn’t it? Now it’s not that I would disagree with any of these points. They are all clearly important and helpful attitudes to have. But I simply can’t keep that many ideas in my head at any single point in time, let alone implement them! I have enough trouble remembering the concept of loving my wife in sickness and in health (I remember the health part, but when she’s sick my memory starts to fade). Another problem I have with this approach is the idea that I can change my character. Six years of studying psychology has given me a reasonably clear understanding of how difficult it is to change your character – no matter how many self-help books you read. In fact, only by acting against one’s character is the child able to stop wetting their pants, or the alcoholic able to give up drinking, or the abuser able to stop abusing their partner. As much as we like the idea that we are completely in control of ourselves, we are largely driven by the things we most deeply want.

Your character changes because your behaviour changes. And your behaviour changes because you want to behave in a new way more than you want to behave in an old way. And you do this because you can see that the new way will bring you more of what you deeply want than the old way will! The obvious question then, is whether you really do want to love your partner more than you want to avoid the pain that will inevitably come along with it. And do you deeply want the commitment, companionship, and intimacy that such love will bring?