5 ways to Affair-proof your Marriage

This is #12 in a series of blogs by PJ on Relationships and Sexuality. This post gives five ways to affair-proof your marriage…

1. Take great courage because God is on your side.

God is for you! You are not swimming upstream. God created marriage. Jesus did his first miracle at a wedding. History will culminate with the marriage of Christ to the Church. He is faithful to see your marriage a great success.

2. Realise that a great marriage involves hard work

A young boy had a passion for gardening. He soon turned the front lawn into a place of beauty.  A man walks by and says “Who grew these flowers, son?”  “I did” the boy says.  “No, it was not you, son. God made this garden beautiful”, replied the man. The boy replied, “Yes, that’s true, but you should have seen this place when God had it all to Himself!” Marriage is teamwork between you, your spouse and God. The more you put in, the more you get out.

3. Pay attention to pace of life

Busy lives and demanding work schedules inevitably puts pressure on a marriage. There is no solution to this other than to take a firm grip on your life! Stop blaming other people and situations and make a plan! Your life is not going to get less busy in the future. Act now. Change jobs if necessary. Take a salary cut if necessary, but make sure that the pace of life does not corrode your marriage.

4. Pay attention to finances

Finances can place significant strain on a marriage. Usually it is financial lack that brings the most strain, although too much money can lead to other types of strain (‘bring it on’ I can hear some of you say). If you are under financial strain, you have two options: (1) Decrease expenditure, and / or (2) Increase income. The way out of financial strain is to make immediate and radical slashes to expenditure to get back within budget. This may mean a drop in your standard of living but living within your means is always less stressful than living beyond your means. Then, you can gradually work to increase income over the coming months and years.

5. Pay attention to sex

There is an old saying that the devil does everything possible to get you into bed before you are married and everything possible to keep you out of it once you are married. Keep working at it. Keep being unselfish. Keep enjoying.

My next post will look at another 5 ways to affair-proof your marriage.