Marriage Negotiations

At its core, marriage, or for that matter any relationship, is a series of negotiations. When you peel back the layers of extraneous decisions to be made in your married life, the center of each decision is a core of negotiation with your spouse.
This is not a bad thing; as a matter of fact, it's excellent. You see, negotiation requires two parties to determine the outcome by questioning their own motives, the motives of their partner, and then negotiating in good faith. It requires love, forgiveness, hope, faith, repentance, reconciliation, and more. In other words, spiritual and emotional maturity.
The core of every negotiation rests upon a mutual faith. If you cannot believe that your spouse is acting in good faith toward you, then you will always feel like you're living under tyranny and not in harmony. That is not to say that you are living under tyranny, just that you will feel like it.
God created the natural tension that exists between the sexes for our benefit, not our frustration, even though it can sometimes feel like the latter. Not only are we different, but individually we are both deficient. God in his wisdom designed man and woman individually in a way that was incomplete and emotionally crippled.
We can read about this in the creation narrative of Genesis Chapter 1. It tells us that when God made the light, he responded, “And God saw the light, that it was good.”
Likewise, the land and seas: “It was good.”
Plants and trees, sun and moon: “It was good.”
Everything that God made he observed that the function of it was good. And then he made man.
Genesis 2:18, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”
God intentionally created Adam insufficient to the task that he would call him to. He then created a woman who was also insufficient. In order to attain sufficiency, both would have to give of themselves to the other in a relationship defined by faith, hope, and love.
God then created woman from the man and simultaneously defined and instituted a hierarchical, faith-based relationship for our good—marriage.
The point is not efficiency or ease; the point is growth. In his infancy man is incapable of seeing the picture that God is painting with his life. For us to conform to the image that God would have us achieve requires the input of our spouse.
Adam was incomplete for the task that God would assign him, that of replenishing the earth. More than that, Adam was incomplete emotionally, intellectually, socially, and physically. It would require a woman for him to be whole.
Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
This is not to say that one cannot find sufficiency in Christ without being married. Paul certainly did. But in this case, Christ is shoring up a lack because his grace is sufficient irrespective of our weakness.
However, when these two incomplete pieces come together, they create more than the sum of their parts: physically, they create new humans; socially, they create society fit for raising those humans; intellectually, they create literature, art, and wealth to pass on all they have learned; emotionally, they create family structure with a plethora of relationships. We are often unaware of the vast need in our lives until we experience what it is like to be a dad, a brother, an uncle, a mom, a daughter, or a grandmother. I have often said I learned more about the love of God in the first 24 minutes of being a dad than in the first 24 years of being alive.
Adam was also incomplete spiritually and would need a faith-based relationship with God to attain his highest potential. See Dad’s book Faith: More Than You Think for more on this.
The inherent insufficiency of man and woman in no way diminishes the beauty of what God has created. Think of it like this. If you listen to someone singing one of four parts of harmony, it sounds terrible. For the harmony to sound beautiful, all the parts need to be in place. Adam has his place and Eve has hers.
So, what is his place and what is hers?
It has been postulated that men tend to see the world in the macro while women tend to see the world in the micro.
Women tend to see the world as a series of shifting relationships, and they focus on each one individually and simultaneously, while we men scratch our heads and try to figure out what on earth they’re talking about. Men tend to see the world as a series of opportunities. We look at the big picture to the detriment of the relationships that are under our noses.
Men tend to like things like politics, sports, business, and fishing because each of these things brings the possibility of opportunity to be exploited. The idea that you might catch the big one inexorably pulls you back to the river with your fishing pole.
Women tend to pay attention to birthdays, anniversaries, who likes who, who wore what outfit, and so forth.
Unsurprisingly a balanced and productive life requires both perspectives to function in harmony. That harmony must be negotiated, curbing the inevitable excess of each so that the best of each worldview is captured for the good of the family and children.
For instance, a man may find great satisfaction in a thriving success in business. If at any time you were to have a conversation with him about what is most important in life, he would confirm that it is his family and his relationship with his wife. However, from day to day he will sacrifice his family and his relationship with his wife to triumph in his chosen field of business. Intellectually, he understands and will even attest to the fact that what he is doing will not bring him happiness in the long run. But his inability to feel the value of what is near cripples his ability to make a wise decision between the far-reaching goals of winning in business and the immediate need to spend time with his family.
Pastors and ministers tend to do this with a sense of holy reverence, “knowing” that their prescribed activity takes precedence over any familial responsibility they would otherwise engender. They are wrong.
The wife wants the husband to stay home more, spend more time with the children, focus on the shifting quagmire that is the relationships taking place in the community. While acknowledging a need for a stable income, she will repeatedly ask that he not put in the time and effort needed at work to succeed.
When we get married, the furthest thing from our mind is negotiating disagreements with our spouse.
When you both have a shared vision or desire, it's easy to act in concert to attain a mutually satisfactory goal. Inevitably more and more complicated goals are added to your married life and the ideal resolution diverges between the sexes. This isn't a bad thing; it demands growth of you both.
Each married couple has a finite number of resources to be spent as a unit. These resources include money, status, time, children, health, location, etc. The way you spend each resource needs to be negotiated with your spouse’s opposing perspective to create a mutually beneficial outcome that is advantageous to the entire family.
If you understand and view their opposition not as ignorance, but as the piece missing from your view of the family’s decision, you will find their input not as an obstacle to be overcome but a note of harmony to help you find balance.
If you spend much time in the business world or in the world in general, you will find that life is full of failed negotiations. Whether you're buying a house, renting a car, or working a 9 to 5, you often become dissatisfied with the obligation/reward balance and bail on the negotiation. There's nothing wrong with this. Sometimes it is best for both parties to go their separate ways.
Marriage is different. Marriage is not an agreement or even a contract. It is a covenant with God as its arbiter. As such it is not your right to cease negotiating and go your separate ways. If you are unhappy, learn to do a better job negotiating.
Now this doesn't mean that every disagreement can be settled in a way that is satisfactory to both partners. Often it will be dissatisfactory to both partners. The goal for the godly married couple is not satisfaction but a successful, moral marriage. To accomplish this, you need to view yourself not as an independent agent, but as a fiduciary acting on God's behalf to create a union that honors the office that he has granted you.
It is a radically different way of looking at marriage and life than anything you will find in the world. As a Christian you are a Christ follower. You are to deny yourself and seek first God's kingdom and righteousness. The Bible says this will make you a peculiar person. As your goal changes from a way to make you happy, to a way to make God happy, it gives you both a shared goal and shared vision that all future negotiations are geared toward.
Now God has understood his creation better than we have, so he laid down rules for the negotiating table based not on the individual, but on a gender-specific, God-ordered hierarchy.
God has ordained that the husband sets the vision for the home. God has said that wives are to submit themselves to their own husbands as unto the Lord in every thing. This doesn't end negotiation; it just establishes a framework in which we understand our place in the negotiation. God has ordained that the husband be the provider and protector of the family. This is not because the wife could not provide or protect, but because the husband is supposed to see far and be oriented toward goals outside the home. The wife should see what is close and negotiate for the relationships of the home. If either side wins, the negotiations have failed and the marriage will flounder. The implied tension is necessary to bring out the best in each, both emotionally and physically.
God has ordained that the husband should love his wife the way he would love himself despite how he might feel. He has said that the husband should not be bitter toward his wife. The husband is to recognize the value of the wife's input and the necessity to protect, shelter, and love her as an integral part of his family. When a husband fails in his duty, he will suffer the consequences. Unfortunately, so will the entire family.
Saints, this is not a bleak, duty-bound, limiting existence any more than children are there to trap you into a cycle of financial responsibility. Freedom is not the cessation of responsibility and duty; it is the ability to acquit yourself well of the duty that you have taken on.
A failed marriage is a failure of both partners. If your spouse is awful, that is your fault; you picked them. It is not, however, your kids’ fault. Accept your part of the responsibility and repent to your kids, repent to God, and follow him.
If you have not failed yet, figure out a way to do better. Negotiate better, love better, pray harder, remember the cost of failure and the beauty of success.
There is nothing more fulfilling than being in the middle of a well-ordered, God-loving, kid-raising, hymn-singing, foot-stomping, fun-having family.
So, fight for yours. They’re worth it!