This One Thing Will Kill Your Relationship

For the sake of all that is good, I actually implore all who are dating, engaged, or married: if God has called you to this, to partner with your significant other, please don't allow your relationship with him or her to take its natural course.

Do you know what will happen if you let it? I'll tell you.

It will die.

And I'm not just being dramatic.

I'm reminding you of a truth long forgotten by many significant others and spouses in our culture: we aren't designed to wait and see what happens in our relationships; we are designed to discern what is supposed to happen and then to decide that it will.

But if you surrender that power to your relationship's natural course—if you decide to see if your relationship will work out when you don't do work—its death will surely follow.

That's because without work, we revert to our defaults, or worse, we never even transcend them. And I don't know what your default is, but I can tell you mine.

Are you defaulting?

By default, I am lazy. I prefer the path of least resistance—whatever doesn't require me to exert myself beyond the bare minimum. I am also selfish, by default. I don't want to accommodate for other people's preferences if it's ever at the expense of my own.

By default, I am a coward—I prefer to be confined to my comfort zone. I am also resistant to change, by default. I don't want to adjust for others even when doing so would be better for me, too.

But my default behavior creates conditions in which relationships cannot thrive.

Relationships require effort: you've got to make plans and to follow through on them. But you don't do that while you're lazy. Relationships require love: you've got to will the good of the beloved, to want what's best for him or her. But you don't do that while you're selfish.

Relationships require courage: you have to have hard conversations. But you won't if you're stuck inside your comfort zone. And relationships are supposed to result in our growth. But you don't grow if you won't make some reasonable changes when doing so is for your own good, let alone for the good of the other.

Yet many of us have bought into a lie that the culture that surrounds us has sold to us: a relationship is not good if it requires us to transcend our default behavior—a lie highlighted by lots of rom-coms when on-screen couples' relationships are what we start to wish ours were: effortless.

Want to flourish? Gotta nourish.

As a result, we have learned to seek what doesn't even exist: relationships that don't require work, that are devoid of conflict, that don't challenge us to grow.

We have learned to seek relationships in which we never have to forgive a significant other instead of becoming people who are good at forgiving. We have learned to seek relationships in which compatibility is uninterrupted instead of becoming people who are willing to achieve—and to re-achieve—compatibility.

We have learned to favor relationships that enable us to maintain our status quo over becoming people who are able to power through growing pains together. We have learned, in other words, to favor relationships that won't do what marriage is supposed to do: sanctify us.

So we long for easier options—for the options that won't compel us to confront and modify our default behaviors.

But if we're honest with ourselves, we each can admit: breaking our bad habits is not a bad idea, and that if we want a relationship to flourish, we have to nourish it. That we can't just wait and see if a relationship will last. We have to discern: does this person desire the best for me—is he or she committed to my sainthood? Should this relationship work out?

Choose action every time.

And if so, we must participate in making it happen by rising above whatever behaviors could threaten it.

By choosing to act—return the text, make the call, send her the flowers—when laziness tempts us to avoid exertion.

By choosing to serve—speak her love language, let him pick the movie, walk her to her door—when selfishness tempts us to avoid sacrifice.

And by choosing to be brave—ask hard questions, express your emotions, share your thoughts—when fear tempts us to stay inside our comfort zones.

And by choosing to have grace with ourselves and with each other as we grow into who God designed us to be.