There is a sobering truth about marriage that is worth saying out loud before the wedding day, not after. No one has more power over your happiness than the person you marry. And no one has more power to wound you, either.
This is not meant to scare anyone away from getting married. It is meant to help you walk in with your eyes open. Ellen White wrote about this with striking honesty: "No one can so effectually ruin a woman's happiness and usefulness, and make life a heartsickening burden, as her own husband; and no one can do one hundredth part as much to chill the hopes and aspirations of a man, to paralyze his energies and ruin his influence and prospects, as his own wife" (The Adventist Home, p. 43).
That is a heavy thing to sit with. But it is also, in a strange way, hopeful. Because the same power that can wound is the power that can heal.
Why This Matters Before the Wedding
Most engaged couples spend their energy planning the wedding day itself and very little energy preparing for the thousands of ordinary days that follow it. But it is those ordinary days, how you speak to each other, how you support each other, how you show up during hard seasons, where this power actually gets used, for better or worse.
Choosing to Be a Source of Strength
Every single day, in small ways, you are choosing whether to be a source of strength for your spouse or a source of added weight. Encouraging words after a hard day at work. Patience when they are not at their best. Choosing to build them up in front of others instead of joking at their expense.
None of this requires perfection. It requires intention, a daily choice to use the power you have for good. Ephesians 4:29 puts it simply: let no unwholesome talk come from your mouth, but only what builds others up according to their needs.
A Gentle Challenge
Before your wedding day, and every day after it, ask yourself, am I using the power I have in this relationship to build my partner up, or am I letting frustration turn it into something that wears them down? That one question, asked honestly and often, can shape the entire direction of a marriage.
Questions to Talk Through Together
- What is one specific thing your partner does that genuinely lifts you up, and have you told them recently?
- Where have you seen this kind of power misused in marriages around you, and what do you want to do differently?
- What would it look like, practically, to be a source of strength for each other during the busiest week of wedding planning?
Part five of our Married Life series. Catch up with Nobody Wins an Argument With Their Spouse, or continue to the final post, You Don't Have to Agree on Everything to Be United.