See Through Marriage

In today’s Marriage Talk, Pastor Priji has a conversation with Ryan, the author of the book ‘See Through Marriage’, discussing the importance of oneness, the various ways towards achieving it and the requirement of transparency in marriage.

Transcript:

Pastor Priji : You have been married for 17 years now and you’ve been doing this ministry ‘fierce marriage’ for over 7 years now. You’ve also released a book called ‘See through marriage’, it’s a book that has inspired and blessed me immensely. This book really shed light and brought alignment into my life personally.

What was Selena’s and your heart behind this book ?

Ryan: This book was in response to the feedback we’ve gotten from our community listeners and readers who’ve often appreciated our transparency in our podcasts. So our publishers were looking for another idea from us, and we didn’t want to write arbitrarily, so this idea of ‘See through marriage’ came out of that. The thought of seeing through marriage, got us to see more deeply and we started wondering what it really means to us. We bring in a passage from 1 John 1 where it says ‘we walk in the light as He is in the light, we’ll have fellowship with one another and be cleansed from our unrighteousness..’ With this we dive into ‘what does it mean to really walk in the light’ and further shows per the passage, we are not the light but we are the conveyors of the light and the more transparent we are, the brighter the light shines. This is the premise of the book.

The details of the book go into ‘what does it mean to walk through this biblically, what does it mean practically in light of the biblical truth’.

Pastor Priji: When I started reading this book and encountered that verse in 1 John 1, which I had previously read so many times, but never had I read it in the context of marriage. Never thought it would be applicable to a husband and wife relationship as well.
Sometimes, being married and to expose your vulnerable side to your spouse can be difficult, especially for men, since we’re not that emotionally expressive about our real feelings. According to you what are some challenges men and women face in being vulnerable to their spouse?

Ryan: The emotional maturity and emotional intelligence of men tends to take more work for a man to mine the depths of his own heart and feelings. Men tend to be really weighed heavily on the cognitive processes of life, as opposed to ‘how am I feeling’, which is a biblical design. If I feel distant or something in my life being off, a lot of times I will just feel it’s off and I don’t know why, don’t know why I feel bad about something. But not until I start asking myself deeper emotional examining questions to bring things to the surface to deal with it, and then I bring my wife into the mix to share why I feel bad. I open up and be transparent to her. Marriage is a place where walking in the light needs to happen.

All the way back to Genesis 1 and 2, God is creating everything. God creates light, which is good, then creates animals, which is good, then creates man, and all of a sudden it’s not good. Immediately He says ‘I will make a helper fit for him’. That’s the first discipleship relationship, from that place where they’re made ‘Husband and Wife’, made fit for each other to walk out the first command God gives to the couple to ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it’.

What does it mean to be ‘fruitful’?

Galatians 5 speaks on the fruit of the Spirit. We can look at fruitfulness to mean having kids, operating as human beings on the earth etc. but it also means to bear the fruit of the Spirit. Coincidentally the Holy Spirit is the helper sent to us by Christ, to help also in the relationship of a husband and wife.

That is where the passage from 1 John 1 gives further input into our marriage relationship that we need to ‘walk in the light’ so that one of the outcomes is that we ‘can have fellowship with one another’ and the second outcome is so that ‘we can be cleansed from our unrighteousness’. So we walk in the light with this end result in mind.

Pastor Priji: So often I have noticed in my own life with my marriage and also while helping other couples, that when there is sin involved in one person’s life, it automatically tends to build a wall that isolates or pushes the other person away. It could be due to guilt or just looking down on yourself. You touched on the topic that one of the reasons why this is necessary is so that we can be cleansed. Sin can actually be a big factor, whether a hidden factor or secret lifestyle etc. can prove a stronghold that can actually stop the vulnerability and transparency of the marriage.

How important is it for us to be vulnerable and real about our personal struggles with our spouse ? Also what are some of the fears that people have in opening up their personal struggles?

Ryan: The biggest fear is ‘oh no if I tell my wife!’ or ‘if I reveal this part of my life then my wife might not love the true me and not love me anymore!’. Most times we will hold back the parts of ourselves we’re ashamed of, because we’re living in a fallen state, we’re sinful. But the problem is you cannot experience Biblical love without Biblical transparency. If Selena tells me how amazing I am and how happy she is that she’s married to me and I’m thinking to myself ‘if she only knew the 1% of me that I’m holding back from her, she might not think I’m so amazing and might not love me the same anymore’. Even though she’s giving me love, since I don’t feel fully known, I won’t feel fully loved. That’s the biggest fear we have. That is why the Gospel informs this form of love, if we come from that place of insecurity, the Gospel tells us we are formed and bought by Christ and we are righteous because the Gospel says so. Now I can go to my wife with this identity firmly rooted in my foundation.

My primary purpose is not to do anything other than glorify God, obey His word and walk in the light. So now I can go with this perspective to my spouse no matter how ugly it looks, because I am already loved by God.

But at the same time, for instance if I tell my wife I’ve been looking at pornography for the last decade, that’s not going to be a quick fix, it’s going to take some time for my wife or spouse to process that. If I am convicted of that sin and it comes from a place of being loved by Christ, then I can go to her and say ‘ I love you as my wife and fellow Christ believer, but I have this sin that needs to be pried out so I can honor God in my marriage and I need your help’, it might not be easy but now what happens is you can walk through that along with your wife.

For men the biggest struggle is to be able to say ‘am I emotionally mature and intelligent enough to identify sin for what it is and articulate it in a way that I can connect with my wife?’, these are some things men deal with the most.

Pastor Priji: You’ve said ‘your relationship with God has to be the foundation for you to be able to open up to your spouse, and it’s not only that you want to have a transparent relationship with your spouse but it’s also that you need to be secure in your relationship with God, which is what causes you to open up and be vulnerable with your spouse’. If that relationship with God is absent, there is no foundation for unconditional love and forgiveness.

Ryan: Yes, if you don’t have a secure relationship with God, then you won’t have a reason to be the way God wants you to be in your marriage, then why not just hide it from your wife, right? Why go through the pain unless God is calling me for His glory and I care about that. So, without the Gospel as the center, then you don’t have the fuel or fortitude to stick it out in the relationship.

Pastor Priji: I love that part in the book where your wife Selena talks about your heart condition and how you guys had to go through surgery just 2 years into marriage. You had to get that sorted out and she compares that with sin being that one thing that we carry down from our parents and sin can be that one thing that can destroy oneness between us and God, between us and our spouse, between us and people around us etc.

I love how you guys explained how oneness is the goal of marriage, not just to help each other in marriage but also to be one.

What is your understanding of being one in marriage ?

Ryan: Yes, to go back to Genesis that Jesus also touched on where it says ‘the two will be made one, become one flesh’, also to be fruitful and multiply, where if you have kids then God is allowing us to participate in a creative act reflecting His image. Child bearing was always meant for the relationship of a covenant between husband and wife. Now this was a very literal interpretation.

In terms of, how to become one flesh and live? I think transparency is one of the most prevalent ways to identify if a couple is living together in one flesh or not. There are ways that transparency or lack thereof present themselves in a couples life. Some couples have husbands and wives who have different bank accounts, and they split the rent payments, share the bills etc. Now this isn’t counter Biblical, there is nowhere in the Bible that says couples need to have the same bank account, but it drives the Spirit of oneness. Also about how you spend your time, energy, emotional bandwidth etc. Biblical oneness is going on missions together, to be in agreement with valuing the things of God the same way, to bring God glory to the same extents. There is a physical aspect of oneness represented in having kids. Emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy, these all move towards oneness that a couple could experience. 

Pastor Priji: In the book you talk about the need to understand yourself and your spouse, their psychological state. Usually, the church doesn’t really talk about these things like mental health thinking prayer is all that’s enough. Sometimes we don’t know what our spouse is going through, post-delivery depression, mental health issues, traumas from past. I understood from your book that your father was a psychologist and he used to help you process a lot of your feelings growing up. How important is to for us to understand our own personal psychological state and the state of our spouse to be able to be one and understand each other better?

Ryan: I wrote this part and struggled with it, because as Christians we are taught that love is supposed to be selfless and not considering self, as per 1 Corinthians 13, to put the needs of others above our own, as per Philippians 2, to exist as a living sacrifice, dying to ourselves, as per Romans 12. So given these verses, we’d think ‘how can I focus on myself then?’. I struggled with the thought a lot that I don’t want to know myself a lot or spend time on myself a lot. But as Christians we’re called to deny ourselves but not to ignore ourselves. We must do so to ultimately make much of Christ. Doing so will show us our brokenness and His perfection, our need for His grace and intervention in our daily life, shows us our tendencies to not trust God and trust ourselves. But one distinction I need to make is that sometimes self-knowledge leads to pride and self worship, and contrast self-knowledge leads to humility and Christ centeredness. So anything we used to look at our past, family origin or sibling relationships etc, can go either self-centered or Christ-centered. 

Pastor Priji: What would be your advice to young couples, especially who have gone through an extra-marital affair and they have had an issue with a third-person in the marriage? What would be your advice to those people, who are also seeking help?

Ryan: Assuming whoever committed the affair has repented, and the couple values God’s Word and want to see their marriage reconcile, these would be the assumptions required. Then even if the couple feels like they’re standing at the edge of a cliff and the trust factor seems distant, I would advise to look past the darkness and on God’s Word, praying and hoping, clinging to Christ even in the uncertainty, after which, then jump off the cliff together, taking the leap of faith in trusting each other, being honest with each other, being transparent etc. Trust that by going through this way of dealing with this matter, you can have a much better experience of married life, rather than taking the route of ignoring your feelings, burying emotions and pushing things down, to make your married life work. 

‘See Through Marriage’ by Ryan and Selena Fredreick

Website: fiercemarriage.com
Podcast: Fierce Marriage