Caution: Up To Date is designed to be read in a linear fashion, as each chapter builds on principles established in the previous chapters. For your best relationship success, begin with the introduction and progress chapter by chapter.
Chapter Twenty-three
Advice: Who, What, When, Where, and Why Do I Care
“Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life” (Proverbs 16:31, NIV).
“Age is . . . wisdom, if one has lived one's life properly. It is experience and knowledge.
And it is getting to know all the ways the world turns, so that if you cannot turn the world the way you want,
you can at least get out of the way so you won't get run over.”
Learn by experience . . . just be sure it is someone else’s.
Since wisdom is “getting to know all the ways the world turns,” it’s impossible at a younger age to live every experience yourself. Learning by your own mistakes might be OK if you can be sure the mistake is reversible, but why do it? It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. The choice of a marriage partner is one mistake you don’t want to learn on your own – you want to know how to “get out of the way so you don’t get run over.“
The best way for you to become all you can be is to learn all that you can
from those who have experienced all that they have while in God’s metal forge of life.
Most couples expect their relationship to be so perfect that advice is never sought - until too late. Instead of giving a perfect relationship, God may instead give a trial, testing to see whether you notice His presence, or lack thereof. I wish for you love and success, but not so much that you don’t see the need of God’s counsel.
As we have counseled young people through their relationships, we see an amazing duplication of serious issues between each couple. In many ways these issues are the same as those Dan and I "struggled" with over thirty years ago, particularly as we became more serious about our relationship. Issues came up that didn’t have right or wrong answers such as juggling activities with each family.
We had to figure out what we each wanted and mesh that into togetherness, and it wasn’t always a smooth process, especially since the more experienced rarely taught communication skills to their kids – just as we find most parent don’t do today. In their defense, most simply don’t know how, either to communicate or to teach communication. As young people have opened their hearts and minds to us, we see that today’s issues more significantly impact a lifetime. In those instances, if one is humble enough to ask, a little counsel may move you “out of the way so you don’t get run over.”
When we think of seeking advice, no matter the age, we all tend to consult our peers, which is only natural since they are the ones we respect, feel close to, and who accept us. In going to peers we often overlook the fact that these friends have no more experienced in life than the one inquiring. If you have experienced twenty years of life and haven’t experienced the situation, cause and effect, and gleaned an answer, why will another twenty-year-old be likely to have that answer?
Because we love and respect an individual doesn’t mean they have more knowledge, experience, or wisdom than we? Your peers don’t know that they don’t know, so they will offer from their limited experience, which may have worked in their situation, but it may not be the best, or even good, advice for the variables in your relationship. There are just some things you need to know about choosing a spouse that you can’t know unless you have married, have seen many duplications of the same cause and effect, and have observed many relationships over many years to see a pattern of success.
Privacy
Besides the need for experienced advice, your date has the right of privacy. Talking to friends exposes your date’s faults, or perhaps just simple misunderstandings which appear as faults. Consider that if you make an honest mistake, said something you wished you could take back, or misunderstood an issue, would you want all your friends to know? Seeing advice from peers unnecessarily exposes another to censure and judgment, and most often without the ability to explain or defend their mistake. This betrayal, later discovered, will create mistrust and destroy the relationship. Consulting with peers spreads gossip and impacts friendships and relationships.
Danger
Misplaced affection is another side effect often seen when one consults peers or any individual other than a married couple together. There are thousands of accusations of intimacy between even professional counselors and their patients, because intimate conversation leads to intimate feelings when one on one.
Consult no one individual, but always a couple together. Guys might tend to ask his pastor about girls, and a girl might ask her pastor’s wife about guys, for example. With no reflection on pastors or their wives, since some men feel they understand women, and some women feel they know men, well-meaning but very inappropriate advice has been given with significant relational consequences when both gender perspectives were not represented in the advice. The best advice will always come from a successful couple who can share thought processes together from both angles.
Before you consider consulting anyone, establish in your mind this one unbending rule of respect: never consult anyone until you have talked with your date about that issue.
Resource Couples
Following, we suggest ways and means of choosing your counselors for dating, which holds true up until the wedding day; however the rules change after saying “I do.” We suggest you solidify this in your mind as we proceed. Again, the rules change after marrying, which will be addressed later.
Before you begin dating, choose one happily married couple besides your own parents for your own personal resource couple. In brevity, we recommend a mature, wise, godly, and happily married couple (to just one person in their lifetime) who have kids around your age. They should not be gossips and of course, should be trustworthy in character. Though few may fit into this category, there are no other substitutions. Should this couple have grandkids your age, you have the advice from the best of experience and also benefit from wisdom beyond that of your parents – a golden opportunity.
Advice shopping is unsafe—that is, seeking until you find the advice you want and then choosing that couple as your resource. Though you choose one couple, you will be given much unsolicited advice from others, which should not be discarded, but shared with your resource couple who will usually have enough experience to identify the reasons why that advice may or may not work for you. Stick with your chosen resource couple even if you don’t like what they tell you—if the best advice was always what we wanted to hear, we be safe being led by our feelings, yet even Adam and Eve failed at that.
Once you begin dating, introduce your date to your personal resource couple. Choose an additional couple with whom you can counsel together. They should be local to you both and preferably one who knows you both well. For the best advice, spend time, a lot of time, with these couples.
If you have godly parents, seek their advice – keep them in the loop. They know more than you believe. If you don’t see your parents as godly, I suggest that you respectfully consult them anyway, ponder their advice, respect their opinion, and consider their counsels, comparing the counsel to that of your godly and happily married resource couple. If your parents are not the best with whom to consult, or they have relationship issues themselves, choose an additional couple so you have two resource couples besides your parents. Unless your parents are unable to keep your confidence, respect for your elders would suggest open communication with them.
Other criteria for choosing a resource couple includes an awareness of not having all the answers, but avoiding anyone whose first answer is always, “you have to figure it out on your own.” A good counselor will ask about both sides of the story, what you’ve learned so far, share their experiences or observations, and then leave you to decide how to proceed. With their decades of observing cause and effect, experienced people are better able to pick up on very subtle concerning signs and often even counterfeit dates (discussed in detail in a later chapter), but unless you are making a physically dangerous mistake, this wise person recognizes that final choices much be your own.
In one situation, I had the honor of being asked what I perceived as an innocent, simple question: what I thought of a certain young man – was he honorable or was there something concerning about him? Where I had some reservations, who am I to early discourage a relationship that God may be initiating for His glory? What I wasn’t told was that the relationship had already advanced over just a few weeks, that neither parents approved, and she took my “he’s a nice guy” to mean marry him, and marry him she did just a few weeks later.
As time passed, I am sure there was a great deal of remorse on her part for not being more open, potentially preventing much heartache later. I, too, had a great deal of remorse for approving without “getting nosey.” A painful lesson was learned by both.
Advice given on “ill-information” is tainted with disease
If you want good advice, thorough, honest, and even “revealing” information is essential including both sides of the story and personal vices – a good reason to choose your resource couple only from those with discrete lips. One who is afraid to share details with their chosen counselor, one who chooses not to share all the facts already knows the answer.
Moving Forward
Now that you have been dating a year and you start into those more intimate stages of the relationship, you’ve consulted your parents and counselors and have listened to their advice, it’s time to move forward. First consult with your godly counselors, resolving any potential concerns they have before taking the next step. The point of counsel is to protect you both, and if it cannot be resolved, you must decide whether or not to continue the relationship. Now is the best time to make that decision, before becoming more intimately attached in the next steps of courting – and certainly before you marry. If they approve, and you approve, move forward in confidence.
As your dating relationship develops trust and respect, as you and your date’s communication matures together, you will find yourself seeking counsel less often. We find it rather common to have one big issue during the engagement phase even in the most astute couples who demonstrate great marriages later. The engagement phase always adds extra stress with innumerable decisions, responsibilities, and family juggling acts, and it’s Satan’s last chance to mess you up before you vow your allegiance to God and each other. Don’t be discouraged if you have a single big issue to resolve at that time, but our observation shows that both the frequency of issues and the emotional need to counsel will automatically decrease over time – if God is leading. The more you are emotionally secure in your relationship, the less you need to share with these counselors. That is cause and effect. It doesn’t mean that you don’t stop seeking advice to prove you are emotionally secure. Rather, you are emotionally secure, so you don’t have issues that send you to your counselors. During engagement, you may still consult a time or two, and don’t neglect this as some of the most critical issues, and tell-tale signs, emerge during engagement, but if you find yourself consulting more and more frequently, it’s time to stand back and analyze the real, rather than the perceived, direction of the relationship no matter your future plans or past commitments.
As mentioned, the rules change after marriage. If prior to marriage you inform your resource couple thoroughly of every issue, consider their advice, participate in effective premarital counseling, and you learn and use mature communication skills, you shouldn’t have the need for counsel after the wedding. Marriage doesn’t mean you won’t remain great friends with your resource couples, but it does mean a change in your counseling patterns.
Marriage Advice
Once married, though this isn’t part of dating so should be included in the sequel, Updated, you need to at least understand the importance of the change in counseling in order to seek advice appropriately now. The marriage relationship has a much deeper need for respect of privacy no matter what issue comes up. As of the wedding day, you no longer consult these previous counselors as before, and you should not go to your parents. This concept always gets people squirming—at first. Of course, once you think about it a bit, it makes great sense.
The first rule of thumb is to never counsel with your spouse’s best friend. People say the word “never” should never be used. This is one instant that it is most appropriate. Millenniums of cause-and-effect say the same thing: intimate conversation creates intimate feelings. I am not exempt, and you are not exempt. Many believe they either won’t be tempted, or they can handle the temptation. If you understand that it was Peter’s self-confidence which allowed him to betray Christ, you’ll have no desire take the risk.
If you read Letters to Philip, you will also see that marriage issues should never to be shared with your “sympathizing ear,” i.e. mom, friends, cousins, whoever. In going to family or any friends, as with peers, you: 1) betray confidence and show yourself untrustworthy rather than his or her protector, 2) you are comforted without solving it with your spouse and resentment builds instead of the open communication which draws people together, 3) your spouse is often inappropriately judged with your one-sided story, which creates sniping (random discrediting comments) and an ongoing reinforcement of negative thoughts, 4) you feel justified in your stand (which might initially be in error), 5) it skews the relationship of your spouse with the person in whom you confided even if it was resolved or you were in the wrong, and 6) the ongoing pattern damages the marriage. Marriages often crumble because the wife or husband runs to mom (sorry moms), gets sympathy and reinforcement, and a resolution becomes impossible between the three, when the only three involved should have been the godly triune and the couple.
Advice (meaning, "I just need a little advice here" and not serious marriage counseling) after marriage should be sought from your in-laws. I would love to have seen the look on your face when you read that. “You’re kidding,” you exclaim, “You just said don’t ask mom.” This theory seems a bit backward in our social environment, but it isn’t really. This plan does numerous things, all of them good, if it is handled with respect and humility.
Who knows your spouse better than the one who raised him or her? Who has lived with them for many years? Who knows best the way to handle his or her little quirks and get the best results? As spouse, as much as we’d like to claim that we know them best, we don’t . . . yet. We may know what parents don’t, but they have many more years of experience on a familial intimate level than anyone else until you have been married longer than he or she lived in the home. Even so, there are traits and characteristics his or her parents understand simply because they share the same, and they can often advise how to best deal with something intellectually rather than emotionally, since they aren’t in the emotional exchange. They got over the emotions on that issue during the 18-plus years they lived with him or her.
As long as you are respectfully asking their advice and not just whining or discrediting their child, the fact that you are coming to his or her parents for their wisdom is very endearing, a compliment that will build the relationship. You will develop a much better understanding of your spouse and likely some very good ideas. His or her parents have probably known about their child’s issue since early on, so you haven’t spread gossip to them. If they were going to spread the word, it would have been done years ago. Your conversation changed nothing. The only risk is that, if you are disrespectful, you may be talked about. With some analysis, we see that to ask advice from your own parents risks your spouse’s reputation while consulting his parents risks only yours. Which do you see as the godly alternative?
Respectfully asking advice dictates that you never discuss an issue that has not already been discussed between the two, that you never discuss a major issue, and your tone is never discrediting but always loving.
Respect also dictates that you first obtain his or her permission to talk with his parents. If he or she refuses consultation with his or her parents, respectful treatment means that the only person you consult is a paid marriage counselor. Without consent from your spouse, even consulting your pastor is a violation of trust, and unfortunately, a pastor is capable of sharing gossip as well. If you have no financial resources, and you both agree the pastor is the best option, and then proceed by choosing a pastor who will respect your privacy, even from his wife. Per previous advice, and since pastors are human, we suggest that you don’t meet separately with him. If you need separate consultation, respect deems that you visit a godly Christian marriage counselor.
God’s instructions
To understand how important it is for all of us to continually seek counsel primarily from God, and then from carefully chosen godly people, click here to read two quotes from one of my favorite authors, written for any individual choosing to date while awaiting the soon coming of Jesus. I highly recommend developing an intimate understanding of her penned words.
Formal Counseling
Finally, formal premarital counseling is one of your best tools for marriage preparation. Once engaged, we suggest finding a professional counselor that uses the PREPARE/ENRICH instrument from Life Innovations. Many counselors, as well as pastors, are trained in the instrument. FIRO-B, FIRO-F, and MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) are some other instruments that may very helpful. The cost of these tests is often combined in a premarital counseling package which can range from $600 to $1500. Shop around to find a godly pastor or Christian counselor who will administer and interpret these tools for you, giving you the best possible preparation.
The best way to learn about and become a well-rounded date or spouse is to look for, not just consider but look for, ways that you can use other’s experience to grow your life and character. Every person is different, adapting and adjusting differently. There are as many situations and ways to handle things as there are people, and each gender thinks and handles things differently, as well, yet there is a predictable common thread of cause and effect. When it comes to counsel, keep the resources limited for privacy, choose wisely, and apply what you’ve learned.
“Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it” (Psalms 141:5, NIV).
Age can mean wisdom. However, knowledge of life is the precursor to wisdom. By learning specific restraints in life, you will greatly increase your wisdom factor. Do you remember hearing this while growing up: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”? If you adhere to this principle, you demonstrate great wisdom. Some things aren’t so easy to decipher, though.
Did you ever feel frustrated trying to figure out certain genders behaviors, specifically the opposite gender's, how they over-emphasizes nothing as something or under-emphasized something as nothing? It can be pretty confusing at times. Life can be much less confusing with a little restraint, a few specific dos and don’ts, and exercising a little defined etiquette. Not only dating, but life in general, would be much less confusing. Let’s check it out . . .
Advice: Who, What, When, Where, and Why Do I Care
“Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life” (Proverbs 16:31, NIV).
“Age is . . . wisdom, if one has lived one's life properly. It is experience and knowledge.
And it is getting to know all the ways the world turns, so that if you cannot turn the world the way you want,
you can at least get out of the way so you won't get run over.”
Learn by experience . . . just be sure it is someone else’s.
Since wisdom is “getting to know all the ways the world turns,” it’s impossible at a younger age to live every experience yourself. Learning by your own mistakes might be OK if you can be sure the mistake is reversible, but why do it? It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. The choice of a marriage partner is one mistake you don’t want to learn on your own – you want to know how to “get out of the way so you don’t get run over.“
The best way for you to become all you can be is to learn all that you can
from those who have experienced all that they have while in God’s metal forge of life.
Most couples expect their relationship to be so perfect that advice is never sought - until too late. Instead of giving a perfect relationship, God may instead give a trial, testing to see whether you notice His presence, or lack thereof. I wish for you love and success, but not so much that you don’t see the need of God’s counsel.
As we have counseled young people through their relationships, we see an amazing duplication of serious issues between each couple. In many ways these issues are the same as those Dan and I "struggled" with over thirty years ago, particularly as we became more serious about our relationship. Issues came up that didn’t have right or wrong answers such as juggling activities with each family.
We had to figure out what we each wanted and mesh that into togetherness, and it wasn’t always a smooth process, especially since the more experienced rarely taught communication skills to their kids – just as we find most parent don’t do today. In their defense, most simply don’t know how, either to communicate or to teach communication. As young people have opened their hearts and minds to us, we see that today’s issues more significantly impact a lifetime. In those instances, if one is humble enough to ask, a little counsel may move you “out of the way so you don’t get run over.”
When we think of seeking advice, no matter the age, we all tend to consult our peers, which is only natural since they are the ones we respect, feel close to, and who accept us. In going to peers we often overlook the fact that these friends have no more experienced in life than the one inquiring. If you have experienced twenty years of life and haven’t experienced the situation, cause and effect, and gleaned an answer, why will another twenty-year-old be likely to have that answer?
Because we love and respect an individual doesn’t mean they have more knowledge, experience, or wisdom than we? Your peers don’t know that they don’t know, so they will offer from their limited experience, which may have worked in their situation, but it may not be the best, or even good, advice for the variables in your relationship. There are just some things you need to know about choosing a spouse that you can’t know unless you have married, have seen many duplications of the same cause and effect, and have observed many relationships over many years to see a pattern of success.
Privacy
Besides the need for experienced advice, your date has the right of privacy. Talking to friends exposes your date’s faults, or perhaps just simple misunderstandings which appear as faults. Consider that if you make an honest mistake, said something you wished you could take back, or misunderstood an issue, would you want all your friends to know? Seeing advice from peers unnecessarily exposes another to censure and judgment, and most often without the ability to explain or defend their mistake. This betrayal, later discovered, will create mistrust and destroy the relationship. Consulting with peers spreads gossip and impacts friendships and relationships.
Danger
Misplaced affection is another side effect often seen when one consults peers or any individual other than a married couple together. There are thousands of accusations of intimacy between even professional counselors and their patients, because intimate conversation leads to intimate feelings when one on one.
Consult no one individual, but always a couple together. Guys might tend to ask his pastor about girls, and a girl might ask her pastor’s wife about guys, for example. With no reflection on pastors or their wives, since some men feel they understand women, and some women feel they know men, well-meaning but very inappropriate advice has been given with significant relational consequences when both gender perspectives were not represented in the advice. The best advice will always come from a successful couple who can share thought processes together from both angles.
Before you consider consulting anyone, establish in your mind this one unbending rule of respect: never consult anyone until you have talked with your date about that issue.
Resource Couples
Following, we suggest ways and means of choosing your counselors for dating, which holds true up until the wedding day; however the rules change after saying “I do.” We suggest you solidify this in your mind as we proceed. Again, the rules change after marrying, which will be addressed later.
Before you begin dating, choose one happily married couple besides your own parents for your own personal resource couple. In brevity, we recommend a mature, wise, godly, and happily married couple (to just one person in their lifetime) who have kids around your age. They should not be gossips and of course, should be trustworthy in character. Though few may fit into this category, there are no other substitutions. Should this couple have grandkids your age, you have the advice from the best of experience and also benefit from wisdom beyond that of your parents – a golden opportunity.
Advice shopping is unsafe—that is, seeking until you find the advice you want and then choosing that couple as your resource. Though you choose one couple, you will be given much unsolicited advice from others, which should not be discarded, but shared with your resource couple who will usually have enough experience to identify the reasons why that advice may or may not work for you. Stick with your chosen resource couple even if you don’t like what they tell you—if the best advice was always what we wanted to hear, we be safe being led by our feelings, yet even Adam and Eve failed at that.
Once you begin dating, introduce your date to your personal resource couple. Choose an additional couple with whom you can counsel together. They should be local to you both and preferably one who knows you both well. For the best advice, spend time, a lot of time, with these couples.
If you have godly parents, seek their advice – keep them in the loop. They know more than you believe. If you don’t see your parents as godly, I suggest that you respectfully consult them anyway, ponder their advice, respect their opinion, and consider their counsels, comparing the counsel to that of your godly and happily married resource couple. If your parents are not the best with whom to consult, or they have relationship issues themselves, choose an additional couple so you have two resource couples besides your parents. Unless your parents are unable to keep your confidence, respect for your elders would suggest open communication with them.
Other criteria for choosing a resource couple includes an awareness of not having all the answers, but avoiding anyone whose first answer is always, “you have to figure it out on your own.” A good counselor will ask about both sides of the story, what you’ve learned so far, share their experiences or observations, and then leave you to decide how to proceed. With their decades of observing cause and effect, experienced people are better able to pick up on very subtle concerning signs and often even counterfeit dates (discussed in detail in a later chapter), but unless you are making a physically dangerous mistake, this wise person recognizes that final choices much be your own.
In one situation, I had the honor of being asked what I perceived as an innocent, simple question: what I thought of a certain young man – was he honorable or was there something concerning about him? Where I had some reservations, who am I to early discourage a relationship that God may be initiating for His glory? What I wasn’t told was that the relationship had already advanced over just a few weeks, that neither parents approved, and she took my “he’s a nice guy” to mean marry him, and marry him she did just a few weeks later.
As time passed, I am sure there was a great deal of remorse on her part for not being more open, potentially preventing much heartache later. I, too, had a great deal of remorse for approving without “getting nosey.” A painful lesson was learned by both.
Advice given on “ill-information” is tainted with disease
If you want good advice, thorough, honest, and even “revealing” information is essential including both sides of the story and personal vices – a good reason to choose your resource couple only from those with discrete lips. One who is afraid to share details with their chosen counselor, one who chooses not to share all the facts already knows the answer.
Moving Forward
Now that you have been dating a year and you start into those more intimate stages of the relationship, you’ve consulted your parents and counselors and have listened to their advice, it’s time to move forward. First consult with your godly counselors, resolving any potential concerns they have before taking the next step. The point of counsel is to protect you both, and if it cannot be resolved, you must decide whether or not to continue the relationship. Now is the best time to make that decision, before becoming more intimately attached in the next steps of courting – and certainly before you marry. If they approve, and you approve, move forward in confidence.
As your dating relationship develops trust and respect, as you and your date’s communication matures together, you will find yourself seeking counsel less often. We find it rather common to have one big issue during the engagement phase even in the most astute couples who demonstrate great marriages later. The engagement phase always adds extra stress with innumerable decisions, responsibilities, and family juggling acts, and it’s Satan’s last chance to mess you up before you vow your allegiance to God and each other. Don’t be discouraged if you have a single big issue to resolve at that time, but our observation shows that both the frequency of issues and the emotional need to counsel will automatically decrease over time – if God is leading. The more you are emotionally secure in your relationship, the less you need to share with these counselors. That is cause and effect. It doesn’t mean that you don’t stop seeking advice to prove you are emotionally secure. Rather, you are emotionally secure, so you don’t have issues that send you to your counselors. During engagement, you may still consult a time or two, and don’t neglect this as some of the most critical issues, and tell-tale signs, emerge during engagement, but if you find yourself consulting more and more frequently, it’s time to stand back and analyze the real, rather than the perceived, direction of the relationship no matter your future plans or past commitments.
As mentioned, the rules change after marriage. If prior to marriage you inform your resource couple thoroughly of every issue, consider their advice, participate in effective premarital counseling, and you learn and use mature communication skills, you shouldn’t have the need for counsel after the wedding. Marriage doesn’t mean you won’t remain great friends with your resource couples, but it does mean a change in your counseling patterns.
Marriage Advice
Once married, though this isn’t part of dating so should be included in the sequel, Updated, you need to at least understand the importance of the change in counseling in order to seek advice appropriately now. The marriage relationship has a much deeper need for respect of privacy no matter what issue comes up. As of the wedding day, you no longer consult these previous counselors as before, and you should not go to your parents. This concept always gets people squirming—at first. Of course, once you think about it a bit, it makes great sense.
The first rule of thumb is to never counsel with your spouse’s best friend. People say the word “never” should never be used. This is one instant that it is most appropriate. Millenniums of cause-and-effect say the same thing: intimate conversation creates intimate feelings. I am not exempt, and you are not exempt. Many believe they either won’t be tempted, or they can handle the temptation. If you understand that it was Peter’s self-confidence which allowed him to betray Christ, you’ll have no desire take the risk.
If you read Letters to Philip, you will also see that marriage issues should never to be shared with your “sympathizing ear,” i.e. mom, friends, cousins, whoever. In going to family or any friends, as with peers, you: 1) betray confidence and show yourself untrustworthy rather than his or her protector, 2) you are comforted without solving it with your spouse and resentment builds instead of the open communication which draws people together, 3) your spouse is often inappropriately judged with your one-sided story, which creates sniping (random discrediting comments) and an ongoing reinforcement of negative thoughts, 4) you feel justified in your stand (which might initially be in error), 5) it skews the relationship of your spouse with the person in whom you confided even if it was resolved or you were in the wrong, and 6) the ongoing pattern damages the marriage. Marriages often crumble because the wife or husband runs to mom (sorry moms), gets sympathy and reinforcement, and a resolution becomes impossible between the three, when the only three involved should have been the godly triune and the couple.
Advice (meaning, "I just need a little advice here" and not serious marriage counseling) after marriage should be sought from your in-laws. I would love to have seen the look on your face when you read that. “You’re kidding,” you exclaim, “You just said don’t ask mom.” This theory seems a bit backward in our social environment, but it isn’t really. This plan does numerous things, all of them good, if it is handled with respect and humility.
Who knows your spouse better than the one who raised him or her? Who has lived with them for many years? Who knows best the way to handle his or her little quirks and get the best results? As spouse, as much as we’d like to claim that we know them best, we don’t . . . yet. We may know what parents don’t, but they have many more years of experience on a familial intimate level than anyone else until you have been married longer than he or she lived in the home. Even so, there are traits and characteristics his or her parents understand simply because they share the same, and they can often advise how to best deal with something intellectually rather than emotionally, since they aren’t in the emotional exchange. They got over the emotions on that issue during the 18-plus years they lived with him or her.
As long as you are respectfully asking their advice and not just whining or discrediting their child, the fact that you are coming to his or her parents for their wisdom is very endearing, a compliment that will build the relationship. You will develop a much better understanding of your spouse and likely some very good ideas. His or her parents have probably known about their child’s issue since early on, so you haven’t spread gossip to them. If they were going to spread the word, it would have been done years ago. Your conversation changed nothing. The only risk is that, if you are disrespectful, you may be talked about. With some analysis, we see that to ask advice from your own parents risks your spouse’s reputation while consulting his parents risks only yours. Which do you see as the godly alternative?
Respectfully asking advice dictates that you never discuss an issue that has not already been discussed between the two, that you never discuss a major issue, and your tone is never discrediting but always loving.
Respect also dictates that you first obtain his or her permission to talk with his parents. If he or she refuses consultation with his or her parents, respectful treatment means that the only person you consult is a paid marriage counselor. Without consent from your spouse, even consulting your pastor is a violation of trust, and unfortunately, a pastor is capable of sharing gossip as well. If you have no financial resources, and you both agree the pastor is the best option, and then proceed by choosing a pastor who will respect your privacy, even from his wife. Per previous advice, and since pastors are human, we suggest that you don’t meet separately with him. If you need separate consultation, respect deems that you visit a godly Christian marriage counselor.
God’s instructions
To understand how important it is for all of us to continually seek counsel primarily from God, and then from carefully chosen godly people, click here to read two quotes from one of my favorite authors, written for any individual choosing to date while awaiting the soon coming of Jesus. I highly recommend developing an intimate understanding of her penned words.
Formal Counseling
Finally, formal premarital counseling is one of your best tools for marriage preparation. Once engaged, we suggest finding a professional counselor that uses the PREPARE/ENRICH instrument from Life Innovations. Many counselors, as well as pastors, are trained in the instrument. FIRO-B, FIRO-F, and MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) are some other instruments that may very helpful. The cost of these tests is often combined in a premarital counseling package which can range from $600 to $1500. Shop around to find a godly pastor or Christian counselor who will administer and interpret these tools for you, giving you the best possible preparation.
The best way to learn about and become a well-rounded date or spouse is to look for, not just consider but look for, ways that you can use other’s experience to grow your life and character. Every person is different, adapting and adjusting differently. There are as many situations and ways to handle things as there are people, and each gender thinks and handles things differently, as well, yet there is a predictable common thread of cause and effect. When it comes to counsel, keep the resources limited for privacy, choose wisely, and apply what you’ve learned.
“Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it” (Psalms 141:5, NIV).
Age can mean wisdom. However, knowledge of life is the precursor to wisdom. By learning specific restraints in life, you will greatly increase your wisdom factor. Do you remember hearing this while growing up: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”? If you adhere to this principle, you demonstrate great wisdom. Some things aren’t so easy to decipher, though.
Did you ever feel frustrated trying to figure out certain genders behaviors, specifically the opposite gender's, how they over-emphasizes nothing as something or under-emphasized something as nothing? It can be pretty confusing at times. Life can be much less confusing with a little restraint, a few specific dos and don’ts, and exercising a little defined etiquette. Not only dating, but life in general, would be much less confusing. Let’s check it out . . .
