Faithfulness in Marriage

This week in class we discussed faithfulness in marriage and some things that can cause issues within a marriage and how to prevent them. Once you are married you need to be 100% faithful to your spouse. It's no longer about just you and your happiness but it's now about how you and someone else are going to be happy together. Each relationship has different ideas of what is and is not appropriate to do now that they are married. It's important for you to talk to your spouse and set those boundaries so you both can be happy and find comfort in your relationship. Some of the ides that were brought up in class that I will discuss today are not being alone with someone of the opposite gender, not being in contact with past relationships, and not using pornography.

It's so important to have boundaries when being married to someone. Just because you love them and are married to them doesn’t mean temptation isn’t going to present itself. We need to have things in place to help us stay faithful to our spouse. One of the biggest ways to do that is not being alone with someone of the opposite gender. This includes not giving rides to or from meetings of any sorts. When two people are alone it can cause them to start confiding with that person and feelings start forming. They start trusting that person more and more. which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but it can easily escalate from there. Once it's easy to talk to someone, it's easy to start doing other things. If you want to carpool to something, make sure your spouse is with you just as a precaution.

Another thing you can do is not being in contact with pass relationships. It's easy and natural to want to stay in contact, even if its just on Facebook, especially if you left off on good terms, but that leaves the door wide open for things to happen. It's easy to start texting them and seeing what’s going on in their life, and then before you know it, you’re confiding in them when you’re struggling in your marriage. That can lead to feelings starting up again and you start wondering “what if?” What if I hadn’t broken up with them and we started a life together” What if we got married, would I have the same problems with them as I do with my spouse now? This can cause you to wonder if you really are supposed to be with your spouse and make you not want to work things out with them. We live in a society where it is easy to just walk away and not work things out and being in contact with past relationships makes that so much easier.

One of the biggest things that causes problems in a marriage is pornography. We live in a world where pornography is everywhere and is easily accessible. Children are being exposed to it at a younger and younger age and it has lasting effect on people. Pornography depicts a false sense of what love is. People don’t naturally look the way they do on the internet and it can cause people to have a false sense of reality. When we view pornography, our spouse can get self-conscious and get thoughts of not being enough. It also interferes with a couple’s intimacy. Pornography is an addiction and once someone starts viewing it, it takes over their mind and makes them not want to be intimate with their spouse.

All of these things can cause issues within a relationship bit it just takes a little communication, compromise and respect for the other person and you can have a happy successful relationship.