There is a lot of practical advice online for why your marriage may be struggling. Yet, I haven’t found an article on a Google search that gets the heart of the matter. What is the true root of every marriage problem to the question of “Why is my marriage struggling?”

In our search for practicableness, which rarely helps most marriages, there is a deeper theological answer to this question. Let’s explore why your marriage is struggling and solve the mystery that virtually no one is talking about.

It starts with Adam and Eve and the fall. What happened in those moments created the condition for your marriage.

Let me explain. I promise this will all make sense if you stay with me.

After Adam and Eve chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God cursed Adam and Eve and defined their new purpose in Genesis 3:16-18.

Through Adam, men establish and maintain order.

Through Eve, women bring forth life.

When God joins a man and woman together in marriage, each ceases to be independent and becomes “one flesh.” The impact is both physical, emotional, and spiritual. Everything you do or say affects the other. In Ephesians 5, we are reminded that no one hates or neglects their own body but instead nourishes and cherishes it. I’ll come back to this point in just a moment.

Do not miss this… neither a husband nor wife can fulfill their roles independently of the other. A woman needs a man to bring forth life. A man needs a woman to help him establish and maintain order. In their “oneness,” each depends on the other to be whole and complete.

Again, I can’t stress this enough, you are one flesh. Yet individually you have unique talents, skills, abilities, and spiritual gifts that are meant to complement one another. As such, men love their wives with care, devotion, and selflessness. Wives love through husbands in the exact same way. How it’s expressed is dependent upon your commitment to one another.

The problem is this… our sin empowers us to see ourselves in opposition to one another instead of in harmony. When we live to please ourselves over our spouses, we fall out of integrity with the order that God established.

I can guarantee you this — 100% of the time the reason the marriage is struggling is because one or both partners are more centered on “self” instead of on “us.” They are not nourishing or caring for their “oneness” as Paul writes in Ephesians 5. If you don’t nourish and care for each other, then all kinds of bad things are bound to happen.

This should be obvious but it isn’t. If it were, the state of many Christian marriages would be very different.

Your identity as a married Christian is in Christ foremost and secondarily in one another. You can not be “one flesh” and live independently of one another. That is a root of all kinds of evil based on selfishness.

So, if you want to learn to communicate better or experience the true joy of marriage it starts with selflessness rooted in transparency, confidence, trust, and intimacy. Great marriages aren’t created in a vacuum. They are created by setting aside one’s desires and compromising with and caring for one another.

In Adam and Eve, the mystery of a great marriage is solved.

Now the question is…

Will you surrender selfishness and embrace selflessness?

Will you choose to do things God’s way or embrace world philosophies such as feminism or other ideologies that encourage you to seek self over us?

Will you live according to God’s intended order or the world’s? One leads to harmony, peace, love, and joy. The other is towards destructiveness, hurts, and pains.

The choice is yours.

So, what will you choose?

If you don’t have a community that will bless, encourage, edify, and build you up in your time of need, there is one waiting for you. If you want a safe place to talk about your experience, learn, heal, grow, and bless others who are going through a similar tribulation, I want to encourage you to click here!

Discover how we’re making this happen!

Rev. Father Don