Real People Real Talk

Debunking Marriage Myths

• Paul Calcote • Episode 201

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Marriage is built on truth, and believing lies about relationships can undermine even the strongest unions. We examine seven common misconceptions about marriage and provide biblical wisdom for developing realistic expectations that lead to flourishing relationships.

• Lie #1: You will change your partner.  The truth: Only God can truly change people
• Lie #2: Your spouse will complete you. The truth: They should complement you, but only Jesus completes you
• Lie #3: Your spouse will be your source of happiness. The truth: Only God should be your ultimate source of joy
• Lie #4: Marriage will solve all your problems. The truth: Marriage often reveals problems...so seek solutions as a couple
• Lie #5: A good marriage just happens.  The truth:Great marriages require intentionality and consistent work
• Lie #6: Marriage is boring. The truth: Keeping relationships vibrant takes creativity and planning
• Lie #7: Healthy marriages are conflict-free. The truth: Constructive conflict can actually strengthen your bond

If you like what you heard, be sure to share this episode with a few friends that could benefit from this content too. Until next time, go be all that God has called you to be.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome and thanks for tuning in, to Real People, real Talk. Relevant conversations that take you from surviving to thriving. This is the podcast that goes there. My name is Paul Calcoat and I'm your host. Now let's talk. Well, hello, thriver, and welcome to Real People, real Talk.

Speaker 2:

The podcast ministry that equips you to thrive spiritually, relationally and mentally.

Speaker 1:

Today's episode is all about thriving relationally. We're calling this one the seven lies that we believe about marriage.

Speaker 2:

We're keeping it real today, as our goal is to offer wisdom about marriage and point you in the right direction.

Speaker 1:

And also I want to pause and say, for the very first time for this year welcome back to the podcast, bae, thank you. So let's begin with God's word and hear what he has to say about marriage. And so from the Old Testament we have Proverbs 18, 22.

Speaker 2:

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.

Speaker 1:

Amen to that and from the New Testament.

Speaker 2:

Matthew 19,. 4 through 6, he answered have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God has joined together? Let no man separate.

Speaker 1:

Amen to the word of God and everything that we do. We want to point you to Christ. We want to point you to God's word and not just our opinion and our perspective. So lie number one, talk to us, babe. What is it?

Speaker 2:

Lie number one you will change your partner.

Speaker 1:

And that, my friend, I hate to break it to you is a lie. Please don't go into your marriage thinking that you are going to change your partner. Yes, you should communicate your feelings, communicate your expectations, pray for them, pray with them, encourage them to be better. But at the end of the day, you got to realize that you are not God and only God can change people, Because if you do it the wrong way, you may come off as nagging and they may feel like you're trying to parent them. So I would encourage you to speak your piece, take it to God in prayer and love them anyway.

Speaker 2:

Let God do the work. Here's a quote from Marriagecom. It is never wise to go into a relationship thinking you can change your partner. Positive changes come over time, not by force come over time, not by force, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And on the flip side of that, if you are the spouse that needs changing, then by all means do your part to be better amen amen. So this is more so for those that are dating um. Don't marry potential, marry reality that's good lie.

Speaker 2:

Number two your spouse will complete you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's, that's not true. I mean, if you look to anybody outside of our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ to complete you, then you will always be disappointed, because we humans make mistakes. Relying solely on your partner for emotional fulfillment, for happiness, for intellectual engagement and all the other needs of life, that's a one way ticket to resentment and really going to place a burden on your marriage.

Speaker 2:

That's good, that's good.

Speaker 1:

I know, thank you. Did you know that the phrase you complete me gained a lot of popularity after the movie Jerry Maguire? Did you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I kind of figured it out along the way, okay, okay. Well, jerry, played by Tom Cruise in a dramatic fashion, declares his love for Dorothy. I remember that scene, yeah, with that phrase. And of course Hollywood portrayed it in such a romantic way. That phrase is cute, but it's not correct, but rather misleading.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, our thing is this your spouse is meant to compliment you, not necessarily complete you, because only Jesus can fully satisfy, only Jesus can fulfill you and only Jesus can complete you. Like my wife, I don't complete her, she don't complete me, but we add to one another's happiness, we add to one another's joy and we complement one another as a couple.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we have to realize that power and life and death is in our tongues. So, us saying that somebody else completes us other than God is then giving them a head over God? We also have to understand that if you're saying that somebody completes you, you're physically saying that you are not whole. Question mark Are you whole? Yeah, hmm, think about it that way Think about that Now the difference between compliment and complete.

Speaker 2:

Compliment means that you're adding to something, something is being enhanced, something is improving. Complete means that you're trying to make it perfect.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so just a slight difference there, some nuance. We want to break that down, because when you think that your spouse is going to complete you I mean having that mindset that your spouse is completing you can put some unfair expectations on your spouse, no matter how good of a husband that I aim to be. I won't complete my job, so I won't complete her. I won't fulfill all of her needs, but I will do my best and I, with the help of god, and I will compliment her. Where she's weak, I'm strong. Where I'm ineffective, she steps in and helps. So as spouses, we compliment one another, but only god completes us. I may I rest my case okay, rest what's lie?

Speaker 2:

number three lie number three your spouse will be your source of happiness all right, once again, kind of similar to number number two.

Speaker 1:

I do believe that, especially in our marriage, my wife contributes to my happiness and she contributes to my joy, but she is not my single source of happiness. That's unfair to put that expectation and that burden on her. Jesus Christ is, and should be, our source of happiness, and this is more about keeping God as the highest priority and on the throne of our hearts, even before your spouse. Yes, marriage is good and I want you to be in love with your spouse, I want you to have a happily ever after, but don't make your spouse your idol. We want God to be the highest priority and he is the source of our joy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's a very dangerous thing to get those things out of order. Speak on it. You know, we got to be careful that even in marriage which is of course a good thing that we don't idolize our spouse. God should always be first, and when he is first, everything else falls in the rightful places.

Speaker 1:

You preaching now, so day in and day out, to put that expectation and that heavy burden of your spouse to be the ultimate soul source of joy. It's not right Don't get me wrong A spouse as a spouse, please do all that you can to make your significant other happy and positively contribute to his or her life. So at the end of the day, I'm just placing a higher emphasis on God being your ultimate source of joy and, yes, your spouse will contribute to that. But don't put that all that pressure and unfair burden on them. Once again, I rest. My case was number four.

Speaker 2:

Number four marriage will solve all of your problems that's.

Speaker 1:

That's not true. I heard it said like this marriage won't fix your problems, but rather it will reveal them? Yes indeed just because you say those words at the altar I do that doesn't magically and automatically make all of your problems and issues and baggage just disappear. The debt doesn't disappear if you don't deal with it. The lust won't leave if you don't deal with it.

Speaker 2:

So there's some things that need to be dealt with in dating before you get to marriage right and you also got to realize that whenever you get into marriage, you are getting into not only a covenant with your spouse, but covenant with god at the center, and the devil don't like that. So outside of marriage, yeah, he gonna come at you, but you and your godly spouse together as one, oh yeah, he gonna really try to bring you down then. But marriage can be a very beautiful, satisfying and happy thing. But if you have unaddressed issues while dating, those issues will of course resurface in your marriage.

Speaker 2:

Yeah you have to do the work, make adjustments, seek solutions, maybe even seek help and counseling, but don't ignore the issues, expecting them to simply disappear when you get married you get married, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So the heart behind this is I don't want you to have a lot of problems while you're dating and just think that as soon as we sign the papers, all these things are going to disappear. That's not the case. You take time to work through the baggage and try not to bring as much of it into the holy matrimony, and so I want those of you that are single and hoping to be married one day, those that are dating and even those that are engaged, to have a healthy perspective and a healthy expectation of this thing that we call marriage.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and marriage is not like a magic wand Whenever you say I do everything, just magically disappears.

Speaker 1:

Exactly.

Speaker 2:

You got to, you got to work on it.

Speaker 1:

And don't get us wrong Once again, we are happily married. Marriage is a beautiful thing. It will take work. We just want you to have the proper view and perspective of a healthy marriage.

Speaker 2:

Right, and you can always like you're never truly inside of somebody's marriage, like not even your parents marriage One hundred percent, like you see from your perspective. You see from your perspective. So, going into marriage, you might not see all of the behind the scenes stuff, even with your parents or grandparents or whoever it is, you might not see all the other stuff, and so you might have a skewed view of marriage just because it's coming from your perspective. And so we just want you to go into marriage. Go into it knowing that you can have a beautiful, long, lasting, amazing marriage. But it's going to take some work.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's OK, because marriage is worth it and it's going to take work, just like other things. I mean having a good physique and being in good health. It's worth it, it's going to take some, take some work. So, yeah, what's? A lot of number five, number five number five a good marriage just happened.

Speaker 2:

Now it was fawn weaver that said a great marriage isn't something that just happens, is something that must be created. She also once said that the greatest marriages are built on teamwork, mutual respect, a healthy dose of admiration and a never-ending portion of love and grace.

Speaker 1:

Man Fawn Weaver out here dropping bars man. So marriage was and is God's idea. It's a beautiful thing, but it will take work, it will take intentionality. If you don't put work into your marriage, you can't just expect the great marriage to just happen just like that. Yeah, If you don't plant the right seeds in your marriage, you can't expect to have a happy and healthy marriage. And so here are just some examples of good seeds that you can plant and that are going to produce a positive harvest in your marriage.

Speaker 2:

Number one prayer Pray for each other and pray with each other often.

Speaker 1:

Most definitely. Prayer is one of the ways that we make and keep Christ at the center of our marriage. The second thing I would encourage you to do is to invest in your marriage. That could be also a marriage enrichment event or some marriage ministry at your church or listening to marriage related podcasts together. That's another way. What's another C, babe?

Speaker 2:

Using your words to build up instead of break down.

Speaker 1:

Yes, your words have power. As my wife already said, life and death is in the power of the tongue. When you speak to your spouse, are you speaking life into them or are you speaking death into them? And then fourthly and we've done an episode on this and talked about this but be quick to forgive. So those are just a few ways that you can plant some good seeds, but my point is this In order to have a great marriage, you both have to be willing to make it happen and put in the work.

Speaker 2:

I work, work Exactly. I love work, Exactly. I love that commercial Lie number six marriage is boring.

Speaker 1:

The devil is a lie.

Speaker 2:

I am.

Speaker 1:

Marriage can be boring if you let it, but it doesn't have to be boring Communicate often and make plans to have fun with one another. So my wife and I, we meet weekly and we use that time to pray, to read God's word, to talk about our schedule, to review the budget. We don't do all of those things every time, but make sure we pray and read God's word. And then we also meet monthly to kind of review the previous month and one of the questions that we ask is this did we have fun together this month? Because we place a high value on having fun and while we own this topic, we also ask the following questions when we have our weekly meeting how did we do spiritually?

Speaker 1:

in other words, were we consistent in bible study and reading god's word on our own and as a couple were? Were we consistent in prayer? So that's what we mean when we say how did we do spiritually?

Speaker 2:

How did we do financially?

Speaker 1:

And this can be a tough one because we got to you know, be real, like how much did we save? What areas did we overspend? Did we eat that Whataburger and Chick-fil-A too much, who knows? That's for me and my wife to discuss all right discuss, all right. So we devoted an entire episode to date ideas and I want to leave that link in the description below so you can check it out.

Speaker 1:

But here are a few ways to avoid boredom number one please don't get stuck in a routine, or rather, don't get stuck in a rut. Be spontaneous from time to time, and one way that we have more spontaneity and just even kind of plan it too, is that we don't save our fun for the weekend only. From time to time we'll go out and even have fun on the weekdays, and we love that. We'll go and have a date on a Monday and it hardly be anybody in the restaurant and we love that.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, Yay, yay, Number two we surprise each other. We take Chris and lunch to each other's job. We bring home a just because gift on a random night.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just give me some ideas to kind of spice things up. And number three if you keep doing things to make your spouse feel love, feel cherished and appreciated, you can keep boredom away.

Speaker 2:

Another way to keep boredom away is to set goals together, as that can keep y'all connected, engaged and aiming at the same thing. But now I rest my case.

Speaker 1:

Not you resting your case too. So I'll say this and we'll move on. Marriage is meant to be enjoyed, not merely endured. Keep having fun and keep making memories with your spouse, no matter how long you've been married. Be intentional. Do what you can to keep that honeymoon phase coming back and back and back. Have some fun. So that is a lie, that marriage is boring. And for the final lie, at least for our current list, what is it, bae?

Speaker 2:

healthy marriages are conflict free oh, let's talk about it now, a marriage consists of two imperfect humans sharing a life together.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, there there will be conflicts and disagreement yeah, man, we you know sometimes it's not gonna always get along, yep, but we should always keep forgiving, keep communicating and keep loving one another, regardless.

Speaker 1:

Um, as a matter of fact, you know if you don't have any conflict at all. I would encourage you to take a closer look at your relationship. Maybe one of you tend to just let everything go and you avoid conflict and you sweep everything under the rug. But if you sweep everything under the rug, but if you sweep everything under the rug, eventually you're going to trip over it. Let me break this down. I am all for extending grace and being quick to forgive and keeping the peace, but you can't hold everything in, because an explosion or implosion may happen later. So my point is this conflict is normal, but in a healthy way. You may disagree with your spouse, but you can disagree with them without belittling them. You can do so without yelling. You definitely can do so without calling them out of their names. So speak the truth and love, but also seek to find a solution together speak the truth in love, but also seek to find a solution together.

Speaker 2:

That is so true and, in actuality. Conflict is important and it's an opportunity to grow and improve as a couple.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, most definitely, and I saw this quote on LinkedIn and it said healthy conflict allows couples to express their thoughts and feelings and can help them to work through their problems. When handled constructively, conflict can actually bring couples together. That's good, that is good.

Speaker 2:

But we also have to realize that so many of us have seen unhealthy conflict that we are afraid to go into conflict. But you can't be afraid to go into a little conflict because that's what's going to get you better. That's how you're. You and your spouse are going to get on the same page because, clearly there was a disconnect and that's where the conflict came from. So it's going to help you in the long run.

Speaker 1:

You just might have to truck through it to get to the other side and I like that you brought that up because really, when you look at it from a different perspective, a different lens, conflict can be an opportunity for growth.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

As you're like. Okay, so we didn't see eye to eye on this. How can we get on the same page? And as you work through that, on the other side of it, you'll be closer to one another, in my humble opinion.

Speaker 2:

I agree, I agree. Yeah, I think this also helps to avoid, like suppression and deep rooted bitterness, because conflict is going to be inevitable. But we just want to encourage you to seek for solutions in a loving and healthy way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, all in all, we just wanted you to be aware of these seven lies that some of us believe about marriage.

Speaker 2:

And we hope you found value in today's episode, and we also wanted to say thank you so much for tuning in.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

If you like what you heard, be sure to share this episode with a few friends that could benefit from this content too.

Speaker 1:

And until next time go be all that god has called you to be and we out.