“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity” (Psalm 133:1-2)

    When we first fall in love and marry, we can’t seem to spend enough time together. We are constantly looking for any moments we can be together. Consequently, we end up spending a great deal of time together. Unfortunately, over the years, life and its responsibilities begin to flood the hours of our days and many couples spend less and less time together. A wide river of distance begins to creep in between us and our spouse; we begin to feel distant, lonely, and isolated. Let’s find some ways to bridge the distance in these relationships, especially those that are a result of a...

“Commit your works to the Lord, and your plans will be established” (Proverbs 16:3)

    Just like all our relationships with others (friends, children and God) our marriage must have time invested in it in order for it to thrive. However, our jobs, service to others or recreation may be stealing time away from our relationship and making us emotionally distant.

Work - “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear” (Matthew 6:25)

For most of us, work is a necessity; however, work should not take precedence over our spouse and family. Work, and the time spend on it, can be a touchy and uncomfortable subject for many couples to discuss. However, it is that very reaction to the subject that may reveal a distorted attitude towards work.

Do you possess any of these attitudes or beliefs about work?

• My spouse does not understand the importance of my job

• I can’t put family time first over work, because we have to have money to survive

• Work has to be my first priority if I’m going to be successful and provide for my family

• My spouse just doesn’t want me to succeed that’s why he/she is always griping about the time I spend at work

If we do, most likely, our attitude about work, and consequent time spent working are stealing our oneness with our mate.

God has instructed us to put Him first, then our family. When these are not in first and second place in our life, then we will experience the negative consequences of our misplaced priorities. The first step to overcoming distance in our marriage caused by too much time spent working is to repent — not just be sorry for another missed family event, but a change of our heart and life. We must ask God and our spouse to forgive us for allowing work to steal our marriage’s oneness, and make clear and specific changes in our scheduling.

Next, we must do some “soul searching.” We need to ask God to reveal to us what is at the root of our need to work too much and/or place too much importance on it.

Some of us will find fear at the root of our work obsession. We may fear any number of things: Losing our job Not succeeding Not making enough money Not being significant Being criticized No matter what the fear, we know that fear does not come from the Lord. (Psalm 27:3) Almost any time we are motivated strictly out of fear, we are in the wrong. Our fear also reveals our lack of trust in the Lord. God has promised to meet our needs and make our life abundant. Here are just a few scriptures to get you started: Deuteronomy 31:8, Deuteronomy 8:18, Jeremiah 29:11, Isaiah 40:29-31, Psalm 34:10, Psalm 34:19-20, and John 10:10. We can meditate on those scriptures each day and build our trust in Him.

Once we have repented and begun deconstructing our motivation for spending too much time at work, we must take actions that place our spouse and work in the right order of importance.

Here are some effective guidelines:

• Discuss with our spouse and pray about the appropriate time to go to work and come home every day

• Commit to our spouse and to God that we will go to work and come home at that agreed upon time every day

• Don’t bring work home (at the very most, limit your at-home work to one day)

• Don’t break commitments to our spouse and children because of work

• Communicate with our supervisors or partners at work that our family commitments come first

• If travel is an issue, look for a new position or job that eliminates travel, or ask for less travel and work towards the goal of no travel

• Spend at least 15 hours during the week (not just on the weekends) with our spouse (talking, eating, making love, or in intimate activity)

The love of work is a sneaky thief and a deceiving one, too. It can make us believe that we have to put work first, and that we won’t survive financially if we don’t. However, we must not believe those lies. God has told us to trust in Him and to seek His kingdom and all else will be “added unto us” (Matthew 6:33). While this verse is widely quoted, it is one of the most difficult for us to put into place in our daily lives. God wants to help us get there; let’s hang in there and address this area with His help.

Community Service and Church Work

Community service and church work are noble activities. However, they too can steal our oneness with our mate if we allow them to have too high of a priority in our life and take away precious time from our spouse.

When community service and church work begin to take precedence over our spouse and family, we may find that we are using those activities to affirm our self worth. These activities may make us feel good about ourselves, afford us praise from others, and can even make us believe that God loves us more as a result.

If this is the case, we must work on finding love and acceptance in the way God intended us to experience it. God has made us His child and found us blameless through our acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for our sins. Our self worth must come through who we are in Christ and what God is making us to be through His Spirit. We will not earn our significance!

As with any problem that is stealing oneness with our mate, this one keeps us out of God’s will for our life. We must ask Him and our spouse to forgive us, and work together at finding ways to serve Him faithfully without abandoning our marriage. Then we need to change our actions and continue to combat our motivation spiritually.

Here are some guidelines for how to balance serving others and maintaining oneness with our mate:

Limit your service work to one or two group organizations, committees, etc.

Gauge how many forms of service you can undertake by how often it takes time away from your spouse and family. You should be spending more time with your spouse and family than on service work.

Limit the time your activities take away from your spouse or family to one or two (at the most) times a week.

Talk to your spouse and family, if they feel neglected and want you to stop, honor their wishes.

Recreation - “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Finding time to play and relax is important to all of us. However, when recreation becomes a point of contention and conflict between us and our spouse or is simply making us more distant, recreation has become a sin.

We are all so busy with work and children, we need to use any possible free time to be with our spouse.

Those of us who let recreation steal our relationship’s oneness have a variety of excuses.

• It is too expensive for both of us to (fill in the form of recreation)

• He/she doesn’t like to (fill in the form of recreation)

• It is too expensive to get a baby sitter. Somebody has to watch the kids.

• It is the only way I can unwind.

    The truth is that when we get married we are committing our life to that other person. We should no longer act on our selfish needs if we are to be one with our spouse. We must create a desire to have recreation with our spouse, or if we do have the desire, but can’t find a way to actually have fun together, we must be creative and act on our godly desire to be with our mate.

    If we don’t have a desire to spend our recreation time with our mate, we must begin to work on changing our heart. Ask God to give you that desire, and He will. At the same time, like in all areas, we must begin to act as if we have the desire by spending time with our mate in recreation. If we do this with the right heart (a heart of love and faith that our desire will begin to line up with our godly actions), then we will be successful in allowing God to change our heart.

Here are some practical tips for spending recreation time together:

• If possible, find an activity you both like to do, and do it at least once a week together.

• If you can’t agree on one activity, alternate activities each week. One week do one person’s preference and the next week do the other person’s preference.

• Don’t give up on trying to find a mutually enjoyable activity. Be creative!

• Here are some activities you may not have considered:

• Learn to play an instrument together

• Start an exercise program together

• Learn to cook together

• Read a book together (a book club for two!)

• Start a scrapbook together

If we always find time or financial constraints keeping us from enjoying recreational time together, we must simply make that time a priority and find creative solutions.

If time is the reason we have for not enjoying recreational activities together, we must reevaluate our schedules and stop seeing recreation together as a luxury and begin to see it as a necessity. Set aside one evening or day to spend in recreation together, and stick to the commitment. Treat that time as serious as you would any other important commitment or meeting.

If we see financial constraints as our reason for not having recreational time together, we must, again, make recreational time together a priority and be creative. Not all recreation has to be expensive or even involve any funds.

Here are some inexpensive activity ideas:

• If we like golf, go to a public course (walk the course instead of renting a cart)

• Bowling

• Matinee movies or dollar cinemas

• Read a book together and discuss it over coffee somewhere each week

• Buy a cookbook and experiment

• Join the YMCA for sporting activities (Be creative!)

Here are some minimally priced to free activity ideas:

• A picnic and walk around the park. (Play frisbee, play with the dog)

• Build a scrapbook together (use old pictures, letters, matchbook, receipts, etc.)

• Play board games together (without the children)

• Take the bikes or roller blades to a scenic part of town and bike or blade around the area

• Learn to play an instrument together (Set aside time to practice/play together)

Obviously, many of us are thinking any of these would be great, but we can’t afford a baby sitter. Again, we must be creative. Here are some possible solutions:

• Trade out baby sitting with a friend or neighbor each week

• Start a parent’s night out at your church. Each Sunday School class rotates taking turns baby sitting children at the church while the other adults go out with their spouse and leave their children at church

• Offer a service to a friend or neighbor who doesn’t have children but is willing to trade your service for babysitting (cook them a meal, mow their yard, rake their leaves, wash their car, pet-sit for them)

If we make recreation time with our mate a priority, we can find ways to make it happen, and the Lord will use it to bless our marriage.

For most Americans, and a growing number of other cultures, “busy-ness” has become an epidemic. Simply, we have misplaced the priorities that God has instructed to honor. Time is within our control. We may have to make difficult decisions and sacrifices in order to bridge the waters of “busy-ness” that have come between us. However, we are not alone in this task. The Lord has provided us the bridge back to oneness with our mate by His power and grace. The challenge is for us to seek Him on our voyage and to reach across anything that divides us and bring our relationship back to oneness in Him.

© 2001, Dr. Rebecca Dowden. Used by permission.

Title: "Bridging the Distance II"
Author: Dr. Rebecca Dowden
Publication Date: July 12, 2001

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