Our personal discomforts, our personal self-consciousness, and our focus on the bad experiences in our history all combine to make us defensive. Once we become defensive, we find it difficult to allow ourselves to experience the joy that the Lord has for us in our relationships. Our defensiveness leads us into adversarial relationships with our spouses and draw us inexorably toward the dissolution of our marriages that we consciously do not want.

If husbands and wives decide to focus on the desires and interests of their spouse rather than just their own interests, and if husbands and wives decide to have more esteem for the desires of their spouses than of their own, like-mindedness between the spouses will develop.

Your spouse is not perfect, but neither are you. God commands us to grow together. We can only do so by following the marital commandments that God gives us, and to have faith and trust that God is navigating the circumstances of our lives, and will gather us together under the authority of His Word.

Jesus attributed the Biblical regulation concerning divorce the hardness of the heart of man rather than to the will of God, and referred the Pharisees back to the original intention of God, from Genesis chapter 2, that being, that a husband and a wife are no longer two separate individuals, but are joined into being one by the creative action of God.

Marriage is designed to be an exclusive emotional relationship between husband and wife; each spouse has the responsibility to follow through on their commitment to meet the other spouse’s emotional needs. Marriage is a leap, and exclusivity means that you are giving up your fallback position; you are putting all of emotional your eggs in one basket.

If husbands and wives decide to focus on the desires and interests of their spouse rather than just their own interests, and if husbands and wives decide to have more esteem for the desires of their spouses than of their own, like-mindedness between the spouses will develop.

The major benefit of enduring trials is developing the patience, perseverance and character to recognize that neither the Plan of God, the situation in the world, nor our own personal destiny revolve around our desires of the moment.