Balancing Your Significant Other With Jesus

Yesterday, I started a series where I address some of the questions that Christian YouTube personality Jefferson Bethke and his wife answered in a Q&A video. In this second installment, I will address (not answer) the following question:

“What are some tips for balancing a relationship while still ultimately making each of your personal relationships with Christ the #1 priority?”

This is a big issue I have with many religious marriage ceremonies. You aren’t professing your love to each other, but rather your mutual love for Jesus. Your love is by proxy. Bethke agrees with that. He explains it like a triangle in which both people are pursuing God and are naturally moving closer together.

In geometry, however, the shortest distance is a straight line so I prefer the direct approach in which both people pursue each other and are therefore naturally moving closer together… very, very fast. I don’t believe in proxy love.

The thing about love that couples have to consider is that people change. Sometimes they will change in different directions and sometimes they will change together. The trick is to allow each person to change in their own way and in their own time while still be able to love each other not despite those changes, but because of them.

Here is the rub; sometimes if people change in opposite directions, it may become necessary to leave the relationship behind. That doesn’t diminish that love you had, but it does respect each person in the relationship to allow them to fine happiness. I don’t believe marriage should always be a lifelong commitment. I do believe that a married couple should try to work-out differences that come up in a relationship to a point, but sometimes people change and it is better for everyone to get divorced and to allow the other party to find someone to make him or her happy. Marriage shouldn’t be a prison sentence.

One problem with Bethke’s model is that he is having an affair. He is cheating on his wife with his imaginary friend. She is also having an affair with her imaginary friend. So instead of sharing their lives with each other, they are sharing their intimate emotional selves with their imaginary friend. This gives people an excuse not to share their intimate thoughts and feelings with their significant other.

Back to the triangle analogy, each personal’s line only meets at the top where they are intimately cock-blocked by Jesus. So they are never really together. With my straight line approach, both people meet head on.

Tomorrow will probably be the last installment of this series, but I think it will be a good one.