Marriage Is Hard and Nobody Talks About It

No one posts the argument at 11 PM over something trivial. No one shares the silence in the car when both of you are too tired to engage. The public version of marriage is effortless connection. The private version is the most demanding relationship most people will ever maintain.

The Bible does not pretend marriage is easy. But it offers something social media cannot: a framework for staying when staying is hard.

Genesis 2 describes the first marriage — two people with no prior wounds, no competing families, no financial pressures. And even they needed God as the foundation. God brought them together, blessed them, and remained present.

If the original couple needed God at the center of the relationship, the expectation that two imperfect people can sustain a marriage on chemistry alone is unreasonable. Marriage was designed with three strands. When two fray, the third holds.

1 Corinthians 13 is read at nearly every wedding, but its demands are rarely examined honestly. "Love is patient" — including when the same frustration arises for the hundredth time. "Love is kind" — including after a sleepless night with a sick child. "Love does not keep a record of wrongs" — including the ones you remember with perfect clarity.

Paul described love as a series of choices, not a sustained emotion. Emotions shift. Choices endure. The marriages that last are not built on unbroken affection — they are built on repeated decision.

Paul wrote to the Colossians: "Bear with each other and forgive one another." The phrase "bear with" is exactly as graceless as it sounds. Scripture openly acknowledges that living closely with another person will test your patience.

But then he raised the standard: "Forgive as the Lord forgave you." The benchmark is not "forgive when earned." It is "forgive the way God forgave you" — which was before you deserved it, while you were still in the wrong.

Ephesians 5 generates controversy because it is often read selectively. Paul instructed wives to respect their husbands. He instructed husbands to love their wives "as Christ loved the church — and gave himself up for her." That is not a power arrangement. It is a sacrifice arrangement.

The model is both partners putting the other first. When both people are racing to out-serve each other, the question of who is in charge becomes irrelevant.

Song of Solomon 8 contains one of the most striking statements about love in all of Scripture: "Love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away."

This is not sentimental love. It is enduring love — love that survives the flood, the fire, and the utterly ordinary Wednesday evening when connection feels distant. The Bible's portrait of married love is not "it will always feel good." It is "it will always be worth the fight."

Marriage is difficult. Scripture never claimed otherwise. But it also declares that the love being built — patient, forgiving, returning again and again — is the closest thing on earth to how God loves his people.