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Marriage
【Marriage】What do women really want to hear men say? The following list may seem obvious, but
the authors of "Why Men Don't Get Enough Sex and Women Don't Get Enough
Love" insist men don't say the obvious often enough:
* "Put on your best dress. I'm taking you out for a surprise
evening."
* "Let's take a walk together. Just
the two of us."
* "You are always so thoughtful
(sensitive, caring)."
* "I love your eyes (legs,
ears)."
* "You're the best wife a man could
hope for. You're my best
friend."
* "When I think about you I get a
warm feeling all over."
* "I'm taking your car in today for
new tires because I love you and I want you to be safe."
* "I'm going to run an errand - is
there something I can get for you while I'm out?"
* "It's just a little something I
brought you to say I love you."
【Marriage】Although we usually think of a marriage triangle as a dangerous
situation, there is one sense in which a third person could create the right
triangle.
Viola Walden tells the story of a
newly married couple riding a train on their honeymoon. A silver-haired man
leaned across the aisle and asked, "Is there a third party going with you
on your honeymoon?" The couple
looked at him strangely; then he added, "When Sarah and I were married, we
invited Jesus to our marriage. One of the first things we did in our new home
was to kneel and ask Jesus to make our marriage a love triangle - Sarah,
myself, and Jesus. And all three of
us have been in love with each other for all 50 years of our married
life."
【Marriage】Marriage is like
a violin; it doesn’t work without the strings. And when the music stops, the
strings are still attached.
【Marriage】Even if marriages
are made in heaven, humans have to be responsible for their maintenance.
【Marriage】If a man has
enough horse sense to treat his wife like a thoroughbred, she’ll never turn
into an old nag.
【Marriage】Marriage is like
flies on a screen door. Those on the outside want to get in, but some of those
already inside want to get out.
【Marriage】Marriage is not
finding the person with whom you can live, but finding that person with whom
you cannot live without.—Howard Hendricks
【Marriage】Carl Sandburg’s
daughter Helga wrote of her parents: “There were never loud arguments back and
forth in our house. My father raged and roared, and often. But it was one-way.
Mother coaxed him out of it. Once when he was very old, I saw him pull at a
door that was stuck. He rattled the handle and shouted. My mother, a small
woman, looked up at him and patted his chest, ‘What a fine strong voice!’ she
said. Disarmed, he stood there in love. It was a thread established early and
woven through their life.
【Marriage】A little girl had
just heard the story Snow White for the first time. So full of
enthusiasm that she could hardly contain herself, she retold the fairy tale to
her mother. After telling about how Prince Charming had arrived on his
beautiful white horse and kissed Snow White back to life, she asked her mother,
“And do you know what happened then?”
“Yes,”
said her mom, “they lived happily ever after.”
“No,”
responded Suzie, with a frown, “they got married.”
With
childlike innocence, the little girl had spoken a partial truth without
realizing it. For you see, getting married and living happily ever after are
not necessarily synonymous.
【Adjustment to Marriage】A cynic once
observed: “All marriages are happy. It’s the living together afterward that
causes all the trouble.”
【Adjustment to marriage】Marriage has been
described as the relationship of “two reasonable human beings who have agreed
to abide by each other’s intolerabilities.”
【Adjustment to Marriage】Marriage is like
taking an airplane to Florida for a relaxing vacation in January, and when you
get off the plane you find you’re in the Swiss Alps. There’s cold and snow
instead of swimming and sunshine.
Well,
after you buy winter clothes and learn how to ski, and learn how to talk in a
new foreign language, I guess you can have just as good a vacation in the Swiss
Alps as you can in
【Adjustment to Marriage】Unhappy spouse to
marriage counselor:
When
I got married
I
was looking for an ideal.
Then
it became an ordeal.
Now
I want a new deal.
【Adjustment to Marriage】Someone has
likened adjustment to marriage to two porcupines who lived in Alaska. When the
deep and heavy snows came, they felt the cold and began to draw close together.
However, when they drew close they began to stick one another with their
quills. But when they drew apart they felt the cold once again. To keep warm they
had to learn how to adjust to one another-very carefully.
【Adjustment to Marriage】”For best result,
follow instructions of maker.” So advised a brochure accompanying a bottle of a
common cold remedy. If such advice is good for the relief of a simple physical
ailment, how much more it is needed for the relief of sick marriage
relationships! God, the Author of marriage, has given us clear instructions in
the Bible.
【Adjustment to Marriage】All of us have
seen two rivers flowing smoothly and quietly along until they meet and join to
form one new river. When this happens they clash and hurl themselves at one
another. However, as the newly formed river flows downstream, it gradually
quiets down and flows smoothly again. And now it is broader and more majestic
and has more power. So it is in a marriage: the forming of a new union may be
tumultuous-but, when achieved, the result is far greater than either alone.
【Adjustment to Marriage】Some time ago,
the Saturday Evening Post ran a humorous article that traced the
tendency for marriage partners to drift from a height of bliss into the humdrum
of routine attitudes. Called “The Seven Ages of the Married Cold,” the article
likens the state of the marriage to the reaction of a husband to his wife’s
colds during seven years of marriage.
The
first year: “Sugar dumpling, I’m worried about my baby girl. You’ve got a bad
sniffle and there’s no telling about these things with all this strep around.
I’m putting you in the hospital this afternoon for a general checkup and a good
rest. I know the food’s lousy, but I’ll bring your meals in from Rossini’s.
I’ve already got it arranged with the floor superintendent.”
The
second year: “Listen darling, I don’t like the sound of that cough and I’ve
called Doc Miller to rush over here. Now you go to bed like a good girl,
please? Just for Papa.”
The
third year: “Maybe you’d better lie down, honey; nothing like a little rest
when you feel punk. I’ll bring you something to eat. Have we got any soup?”
The
fourth year: “Look, dear, be sensible. After you feed the kids and get the
dishes washed, you’d better hit the sack.”
The
fifth year: “Why don’t you get yourself a couple of aspirin?”
The
sixth year: “If you’d just gargle or something, instead of sitting around
barking like a seal!”
The
seventh year: “For Pete’s sake, stop sneezing! Whatcha trying to do, gimme
pneumonia?”
【Adjustment to Marriage】People in our
nation spend more time preparing to get their driver’s license than they do
preparing for marriage or parenting.
【Commitment in Marriage】With the rising
divorce rate and the trend toward total truthfulness these days, it is almost
as though the marriage vows are being changed from “till death do us part” to
“till something better comes along.”
【Commitment in Marriage】The ties of a
durable marriage are not like the pretty silken ribbons attached to wedding
presents. Instead, they must be forged like steel in the heat of daily life and
the pressures of crisis in order to form a union that cannot be severed.
【Commitment in Marriage】The comic strip
said a lot about the world’s view of marriage:
One
character said, “You know, it’s odd-but now that I’m actually engaged I’m
starting to feel nervous about getting married!”
The
other character replied, “I know what you’re thinking. It’s only natural to be
nervous! Marriage is a big commitment. Seven or eight years can be a long
time!”
【Commitment in Marriage】A good many years
ago, I knew a workingman in the north of England whose wife, soon after her
marriage, drifted in vicious ways, and went rapidly form bad to worse. He came
home one Sunday evening to find, as he had found a dozen times before, that she
had gone on a new debauch. He knew in what condition she would return after two
or three days of a nameless life. He sat down in the cheerless house to look
the truth in the face and to find what he must do. The worst had happened too
often to leave him much hope for amendment, and he saw in part what might be in
store for him. He made his choice to hold by his wife to the end and to keep a
home for her who would not make one for him. Now that a new and terrible
meaning had passed into the words “for better or for worse,” he reaffirmed his
marriage vow.
Later,
when someone who knew them both intimately ventured to commiserate with him, he
answered, “Not a word! She is my wife! I loved her when she was a girl in our
village and I shall love her as long as there is breath in my body.” She did
not mend, and died in his house after some years in a shameful condition, with
his hands spread over her in pity and prayer to the last.—W.R. Maltby
【Adjustment in Marriage】There is a
scientific law called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law states that
any closed system left to itself tends toward greater randomness; that is, it
breaks down. It takes an ordered input of energy to keep anything together.
This
is readily seen with a house. Any homeowner knows that to maintain a house, one
must daily, monthly, and yearly invest time and energy to keep the house
enjoyable to live in. If no energy is expended on the house, it eventually
comes to the point of needing a complete overhaul, or else it is knocked down.
Although
it is a law designed to describe material systems, the Second Law of
Thermodynamics seems to describe other systems also. For example, consider the
marriage relationship. It must have a daily, monthly, and yearly investment of
time and energy so that it is enjoyable to live in. If no energy is expended,
eventually the relationship needs a complete overhaul, or else it is knocked
down.
It
is a wise couple who build into their marriage continually-rather than waiting
passively for a complete overhaul in the counselor’s office or a knockdown in
the courtroom.
【Communication in Marriage】Thomas Carlyle paid many pathetic
postmortem tributes to his deceased wife, whom he sometimes neglected in life.
In his diary there is what has been called the saddest sentence in English
literature. Carlyle wrote: “Oh, that I had you yet for five minutes by my side
that I might tell you all.”
【Cost of Marriage】It is often said that two can live as cheaply as one.
That’s true-as long as one doesn’t eat and the other goes naked.
【Role of Wife in Marriage】Charles Swindoll tells of being married
ten years before he became aware of the value of being grateful for the
differences between his wife and himself. He was often irritated that she
didn’t view things exactly as he did. She wasn’t argumentative, only expressive
of her honest feelings. But he took this as a lack of submission and told her
so. Time and time again they locked horns until finally God showed him from the
Genesis 2:18~25 passage that his wife was different because God had made her
different, and she was more valuable to him because of those differences. She
was not designed to be his echo but to be his counterpart, a necessary and
needed individual to help him become all God wanted him to be.
【Obligations of Marriage】The pastor of a big city church ran an ad for a
caretaker-housekeeper. The next
day, a well-dressed young man appeared at the pastor's door. But before he could say more than,
"Hello, I came to see about...," the pastor began questioning him.
"Can you sweep, make beds, shovel
walks, run errands, fix meals, balance a checkbook, and baby-sit?" the
churchman asked?
"Whoa," the young man
said, "I only came to see about getting married, but if it's that much
work, I'm not interested." --Virginia Myers, In Saturday Evening Post,
April, 1990
【Virgins】In a world searching for the latest and best ways to have sex, virginity
has become an embarrassment. This
is to be expected in a society that preaches pleasure, but not in the church
where virtue is assumed but not taught.
After all, people reason, what is there to write about abstaining? Sex is seen as a fulfillment; virginity,
as a vacuum. But it had better be
more than that, especially for us single women who outnumber marriageable men
by 7.3 million in the