Positve or Negative Thinker in Marriage?

I'm currently taking a Marriage Counseling class and am learning so incredibly much! I wanted to share some of my discussion board reflections from the class ... I'm not asking you to love my "marriage advice," but it really challenges our minds to reflect on our own marriage relationships. Think about the question for yourself...REFLECT. PRAY. SEEK.

The Question: Every marriage encounters problems at some point or another. What are some of the reasons marriages struggle as years pass by? ... (the rest of the question is about implementing strategies in counseling)

Every marriage does, in fact encounter problems at one point or another ... especially after years and years together. People get too comfortable, change their ways, become stubborn in their ways,  sometimes people become lazy in their relationship, and some people just lose sight of why they fell in love and don't know how to make "love" last - by having Christ as the center and the core of their relationship. Gary Smalley says it best in his lecture, "Early on in marriage, we see our spouse through 'rose-colored' glasses, laughing at and enjoying all the foolish mistakes that are made." I think as people grow older and more mature in their relationship, they tend to be less forgiving, accepting and tend to become "set in their ways." We've all met couples like this ... the things they loved about each other when they first married became annoying as they were together longer, also called the escalation of "negative thinking". I think in times like this, couples forget the power of communication and let the negative thoughts begin to build up a wall against their spouse. When this wall has matured and has lots and lots of pain and annoyances that haven't been worked through, problems occur - fights happen, communication ceases, fun and laughter is non-existant. These are all vital to the marriage relationship and with them being non-existant, couples slowly begin to drift further and further apart.

In cases like this, when married couples feel like things are "missing" from their marriage (IE: laughter, fun, communication) and feel like all they do is fight and avoid each other, it's important to implement strategies to help change their negative thinking patterns. For example, focusing on the positives in marriage! In every single marriage, we could all dwell on just one or two things and if they consumed our thought process - things wouldn't be the same between us and our spouse. Soon, all you would do is dwell on the bad and sooner or later, everything in the relationship seems negative and gloomy. As Phil. 4:8 says, "whatsoever things are true, honest, just....think on these things." It's important to see the good in the someone---you can't avoid those "negative habits," but you can focus on and encourage the positive ones. As Greg Smalley pointed out, it's vital to give our spouse the "benefit of the doubt" and "stop the tendency to assume the worst about each other." I have learned this first hand in my marriage, we need to seek out the positive in our spouses and halt the escalation of negative thinking. Putting this "safeguard" into practice will help marriages throughout the good, bad and the just plain ugly times. It's important that we let go and let God be the center of the marriage relationship. We, as humans, like to try and do things on our own and forget how crucial Christ is in this relationship.