These days, many people live under constant pressure and stress. For starters, with high unemployment rates, rising cost of living, salary reductions, plummeting home values and mounting credit card debt, we worry about making ends meet.
Many of us feel tired and overwhelmed with too many responsibilities and commitments on our time. Our schedules are overloaded with long work hours and grueling commutes to and from our jobs, along with child-care and household responsibilities and managing our children’s increasingly packed evening and weekend activity schedules.
There can be further schedule complications. An increasing number of couples are working split schedules—with one spouse working during the weekdays, and the other working second or third shift and weekends.
It can all take a terrible toll on marriages. We can become irritated with our spouses for not doing what we think they should to get a job, help out with housework or keep the household finances in check. We can get so caught up living our super-busy lives that we don’t make the time to communicate with each other. Resentment can build, putting emotional “distance” between marital partners.
On top of this, technology has also had a negative impact. What used to be “couple time” is today being consumed by computers, iPods, iPhones, video games, and countless other electronic distractions. Spouses may spend more time “interacting” with the Internet than they do with each other. If that wasn’t harmful enough, increasing numbers of people are being drawn to pornography Web sites and cyber-affairs, which are all too accessible.
These are all very real issues for couples today. But as detrimental as these stressors and pressures can be to marriage, they do not have to tear couples apart. For our cover story “How Can You Manage Marriage Stress in Troubling Times?” I interviewed 15 marriage and family therapists from around the country. The article shares their perspectives for exactly how these societal trends are impacting marriages today, and offers biblically based suggestions for weathering the storms together.
The truth is, not only is it possible to prevent life’s pressures from driving marital partners apart, it is possible to actually come away from these kinds of situations more closely connected as a couple. The key is facing stressors constructively as a team. This article shows how to do just that.
We hope the practical answers and real hope from the Bible will help you and your family in these stressful times. We appreciate your interest, and welcome your comments, suggestions and questions.
Warm regards,
Becky Sweat
Good News Writer
ahhh I want additional wikipedia readers!