Summary: To protect your marriage now or in the future, I encourage you to learn how to identify and overcome the typical underlying reasons for divorce. The first is unreasonable expectations. Ironically, while marriages in this generation are failing in historically unprecedented proportions, our expectations for marriage have never been higher. Couples expect completely unrealistic things from marriage. In a word, they want total fulfillment. They expect marriage to meet all their sexual, emotional, and personal needs and desires. Of course, such expectations eventually lead to disaster. No spouse can totally fulfill our every need, let alone our desires and fantasies and dreams. No husband can give his wife everything she wants, and no wife can do that for her husband. In marriage we help, encourage and bless one another, but we can’t fulfill each other. Sometimes the key to improving our marriages is bringing our expectations down to earth. God commands in Ephesians 5:33 that a man “must love his wife…and a wife must respect her husband.” God wants to revolutionize your marriage. He wants to bless you and your spouse. I challenge you to pray. When you pray, ask God for wisdom [James 1:5] to help you embrace more reasonable expectations. Then thank Him for every added joy along the way. This is Luis Palau.
