The Threat of Selfishness: You Can’t Enjoy Marriage Without Giving Up Your Will

By Dennis Rainey

I’ve been training premarrieds and marrieds for nearly 50 years and one of the most frequent questions I hear is, “What’s the number one threat to a successful marriage?”

As you might imagine, I do have an opinion, but … I can hear my adult children saying, “Google it! Dad, just Google it!”

So what is Dr. Google’s (aka: AI) all-knowing answer?

·      Lack of trust

·      Poor communication

·      Financial pressures

·      Infidelity

·      Death of a child

·      Drift toward isolation

·      Living in a culture that is often hostile to marriage

·      Serious health issues like physical injury and mental or physical illness

These are all reasonable answers, but if you’re looking for the number one threat to marriage, I think you’ve got to focus on one factor that ties all these issues together: SELFISHNESS.

Selfishness affects everything in a relationship. It influences how we talk to each other, how we divide responsibilities in the home, how we resolve conflicts, and even how we spend our time.

What leads us to refuse to admit we’re wrong in a conflict? Selfishness.

Why do we ignore our spouse’s needs and spend too much time in outside interests or with friends? Selfishness.

What causes us to fight each other for control of our finances? Selfishness.

What leads us to look to someone outside marriage to satisfy our emotional and sexual needs? Selfishness.

Why do we manipulate our spouse to do what we want? Selfishness.

So what is the secret to addressing our natural selfishness and building a marriage that lasts a lifetime? 

My answer is not a tidy one, but it hits at the core of the problem we humans have: Self denial. Death to self and selfish motives. And stated another way, a complete surrender to the One who is the Creator of marriage and His teaching on human relationships and marriage.

Perhaps you are wondering who the Creator is? Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul instructs us, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).

I can hear you say, “Uh … not so much … give me another answer.”

And I can say, in total agreement with my wife of 52 years, we don’t have a better answer!

Maintaining harmony in marriage has been difficult since Adam and Eve. Two people trying to go their own selfish, separate ways can never hope to experience the oneness of marriage as God intended. The prophet Isaiah portrayed the problem accurately more than 2,500 years ago when he described basic human selfishness like this: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6).

Whether you are a husband or a wife, satisfying ourselves can be the default setting of how we go about our lives. Addressing your natural selfishness and pride is a never-ending task in a marriage relationship, and therefore it requires true courageous faith.

Surrender is the key

I admit I was more than a bit selfish when Barbara and I got married. After being single for nearly 25 years, I was skilled at looking out for my own needs. But when I took Barbara as my wife, I assumed a new and lofty responsibility—loving Barbara as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25). That kind of love demanded death to self (Romans 6), but my “self” didn’t want to “die.”

After we were married, it didn’t take Barbara long to learn about my tendency to be lazy, which was closely linked to my enjoyment of television. I thought Saturdays were mine to thoroughly enjoy as I pleased. Following the pattern I’d learned from my dad, I would get soft drinks and chips, crawl into my chair, and settle down to watch hours of baseball, football, tennis, golf—it didn’t matter what the sport. I just wanted to become a giant amoeba, a blob of molecules with flat brain waves.

What was wrong with this picture? Barbara needed my help in doing tasks and running errands. Then when children came into the picture, six in ten years, I discovered an unchanging law of the universe: YOU CAN’T DO MARRIAGE AND RAISE SIX KIDS SUCCESSFULLY AND BE SELFISH SIMULTANEOUSLY!

Marriage offers a tremendous opportunity to do something about selfishness. Barbara and I learned to apply a plan that is bigger than human self-centeredness. It’s the same plan that Jesus called for when He told His disciples in Matthew 10:38-39, “Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

And again in Matthew 16:24-25 He taught them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

The answer for ending selfishness is found in Jesus and His teachings. He showed us that instead of wanting to be first, we must be willing to be last. Instead of wanting to be served, we must serve. Instead of trying to save our lives, we must lose them. We must love our neighbors (our spouses) as much as we love ourselves.

In short, we must give up, give in, and give all ... to Christ and His plan for our lives. Defeating selfishness means surrendering our lives to Christ.

You may have read and heard these biblical truths for years, but living them is one of the most difficult challenges of life.

If we live our lives for ourselves, thinking only of our selfish desires and interests, in the end God gives us exactly what we want: ourselves. If you live your life for yourself, make a guess what you get in the end: YOURSELF ... alone and isolated.

The parable of the porcupines

What we need most is to be in a relationship with another person who accepts us as we are and doesn’t reject us. But the closer I get to Barbara, the more she becomes aware of who I really am and the possibility of her rejecting me grows even greater.

A well-known story catches the pain of the human dilemma when it compares relating to each other to the predicament of two porcupines freezing in the winter cold. Shivering in the frigid air, the two porcupines move closer together to share body heat and warmth. But then their sharp spines and quills prick each other painfully and they move apart, victims once more of the bitter cold around them. Soon they feel they must come together again or freeze to death. But their quills cause too much pain and they have to part again.

Many marriages are just like that. We can’t stand the cold (isolation from each other) but we desperately need to learn how to live with the sharp barbs and quills that are part of coming together in oneness.

Giving up your will

The key to dealing with the barbs and quills that come from selfishness is learning you have to depend on someone else because your other choice is isolation. To experience oneness, you must give up your will for the will of another. But to do this, you must first give up your will and surrender to Christ, and then you will find it possible to give up your will for that of your spouse.

Unless you can give up your will and learn to depend on each other, selfishness will disable or destroy your marriage as you face the difficulties that occur in life. The choices is yours moment by moment of every day.

Adapted with permission from Starting Your Marriage Right, by Dennis and Barbara Rainey, Thomas Nelson Publishers, ©.

With Mother’s Day coming up this Sunday, be sure to watch my Inspiring Courageous Faith video about honoring my mom. 

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