I just noticed that Bill’s latest question of the week is on “Marriage Advice”!
Here are the main pieces of advice:
- Resolve that there will be no divorce
- Delay having children
- Confront problems honestly
- Seek marital counseling
- Take steps to build intimacy in your relationship
Well, I recommend clicking through to read this! It’s answer #120.
I command all you married readers to give me your honest assessment of his advice!
Is he as good at advice as he is at Christian scholarship and debate?
Further study
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I like what Voddie Baucham said about divorce (to quote loosely, don’t remember it exactly) “We decided early on in our marriage that the d word was not an option. Homicide was still on the table, but divorce was out.”
I don’t really agree with the delaying children point though. I think that children can do a lot to make parents grow up. If you have children there is also an added incentive to stick it out because it is not just about you anymore.
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Andrew and Jen went to 6 months or so or marital counseling at their church and they told me that this was pounded into them as well. They have the best marriage I know of. And they say it like this “there is no way out of the marriage”. They are awesome!
About the children, I had never ever heard his point before. I had heard that if a marriage is on the rocks, that you shouldn’t try to save it with children. And I had also heard that adding children to a marriage adds more stress and difficulty. It’s tough for me to accept what Bill said because children are a huge part of the reason why I want to get married. I want to make MORE William Lane Craig clones. And you can’t do that unless you have lots of children.
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I think it’s fantastic. :)
Step 4 is one that’s especially hard for seemingly everyone (Christian, non-Christian, healthy marriage, troubled marriage, failing marriage… everyone). It’s a VERY healthy thing to get regular marital counselling from a trusted well trained marital counselor.
I would add bit of solid advice that I recieved in premarital counselling:
Seek the 100-100 relationship. Most people think that the ideal relationship is 50-50. Both people split right down the middle and share equally. Great, right? EXCEPT… who’s keeping score? Under ideal circumstances, no one is really keeping score, but if we’re honest, and let’s be honest, when those bumps come in, suddenly you inflate the value of your own contributions and deflate the value of the other person’s. Suddenly you feel like it’s a 60-40, and so does the other person! So one of you decides, “If he’s only going to do 40%, so am I!” and you reduce your contribution. The partner witnesses this and reduces in kind. Suddenly you’ve got a 0-0 relationship based on unspoken bitterness around unfair and imbalanced contribution.
In the 100-100 you commit to one another that you will always do all that you can to support, love, and be responsible to each other and to your joint duties. When two people become married, they become one flesh. This needs to be lived out even in the details. What one does for the other, he does for both. What one does against the other, he does against both. Practically speaking, if both people commit to the 100-100, it will effectively work to meet in the middle, per the secular idea, but it also insulates against the draw back, as well as tragic imbalance (sickness and disability).
I also think this is the correct context in which to examine the household code’s instruction for marriage in Ephesians. “Wives obey your husbands,” is an unspeakable abomination in an imbalanced, male dominated relationship. In a 100-100 relationship, where the husband loves the wife as Christ loved the church, there can be no abuse, and it becomes a wonderful meeting of two people who are equally valued by God.
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The 2nd point is basically pointless!! I mean, even people who struggle to make their marriages work by themselves would try to hold on for their children’s sake. That is from my personal experience. The whole point of marriage should be to build good families. Good families make up a good society. I completely disagree with the idea of delaying having kids. Truth to be told, I kinda find that a bit selfish!
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