Quickly after the marriage contract is signed, you start to understand why we live in a society where 50% of marriages end in divorce. If you’re struggling in your marriage, you’re not alone. If you’re fighting for your marriage, you’re not alone. Today’s society, whether intentional or not, is setup against a healthy marriage and then we wonder why it’s so hard to maintain.
Men, women, children AND the community benefits from strong marriages. When you’re prepared and aware of the battles ahead or in the present, you are better able to strengthen your marriage, even in today’s secular society.
Here are 3 societal trends fighting against your marriage, as well as, how to counter each of them and strengthen your marriage.
- Mainstream Media
- Pornography
- Extreme Feminism
3 Societal Trends Fighting Against Your Marriage | How to Counter Them and Strengthen Your Marriage
In a search for the top reasons for divorce, you’ll see lists including: infidelity, arguing, unrealistic expectations, abuse, lack of communication, lack of intimacy, etc. So how can societal trending on the “outside” of marriage really impact the “inside” of marriage? We’ll review these one at a time, in no particular order, as well as, how to counter these trends and strengthen your marriage.
Mainstream Media
The Societal Trend
As television series and movies have evolved, they’ve become more and more secular. Have you noticed how television allows WAY more risqué content during daytime hours compared to 10 – 15 years ago? This isn’t by accident. With U.S. adults spending ~ 6 hours per day watching video, television has become the perfect vehicle for driving social trending – good or bad.
In Ben Shapiro’s book Primetime Propaganda, Ben exposes how television is used to shape society’s thoughts, beliefs and behaviors – not mirror it. He goes through year after year, show after show, demonstrating how each episode pushes the envelope more than the prior – essentially desensitizing viewers to nudity, sexual acts, violence, and more.
How It Hurts Marriage
How does mainstream media attack the sanctity of marriage? It portrays secular behaviors, such as casual sex, infidelity, even sexual violence, as normal and acceptable behavior.
As an article from Refinery 29 puts it,
“If there’s a show for every mood, what shows can a person watch when she wants to be turned on? There’s no shortage of options. In the past decade, we’ve come a long way from the blurred-out sex featured on reality TV shows like The Real World. Now, pretty much every show runs the risk of becoming wildly embarrassing to watch with your parents.”
Consider hit series, such as Sex and the City, Scandal, Girls, Skins, True Blood, Orange is the New Black, Spartacus, Game of Thrones, and many more. These are all popular shows that you’ve probably watched or, at a minimum, have heard of. With such popularity around shows known for containing explicit acts, how can we honestly still wonder why sex is treated as a way to pass time versus something to be treasured within a marriage?
How to Counter and Strengthen Your Marriage
But why would there be a desire to knowingly desensitize viewers to this? Outside of a blatant attack on morality and the sanctity of marriage (which I’m not at all discounting), I really can’t answer that. However, I can provide a way to counter this and help you strengthen your marriage and household. The answer: don’t participate. Every time you turn on your television or phone, you’re “voting” for what type of material you want to see. Step away from society’s trends of secular television.
I know this sounds boring and like you’ll be MIA as your friends are catching up on the latest gossip of a series, but I promise you, you will not miss it!! In fact, you’ll find way better things to spend your time on than sitting in front of the television, being fed worldly lies that, you know, counter the holiness of marriage. Maybe this time can be spent actually talking to your spouse! Or creating your own fun. The options are endless when looking for “clean” entertainment. Marriage is hard enough, there’s no need to add temptation to the recipe.
Pornography
The Societal Trend
In past times, it wouldn’t come as a surprise that watching pornography on a consistent basis has a negative impact on marriage. However, today’s society continues to push the mindset that porn doesn’t hurt anyone. That statement can’t be further from the truth. In fact, pornography is incredibly harmful to all parties involved – well, except those cashing the checks.
Laila Mickelwait, the director of Abolition, Exodus Cry and president of New Reality International, is an advocate for women and girls who are enslaved to the sex trafficking (forced prostitution) multi-billion dollar industry. She consistently proves the connection between pornography and the sex trafficking of women and girls of all ages. The average age in the United States is 12 years old – think about that.
One site in her cross-hairs, and rightfully so, is Pornhub.com, which has grown at unprecedented rates over the past few years. Laila shared a comment by the “queen of porn” herself, Jenna Jameson, who replied to one of her tweets saying the following,
“The world’s largest porn site, Pornhub had over 42 billion visits in 2019 (115 million visits per day) & massively profited off of 6.8 million new porn videos that included filmed sex trafficking, sexual assault & simulated child sexual abuse. Pornhub needs to be held accountable.”
How It Hurts Marriage
Case and point – porn causes harm, not only to the women and children involved, but to your marriage. Porn is not a reality. It creates false narratives, deepens the desire to seek situations that are more and more risqué, which can lead to infidelity and, worse, paying to “re-enact” these scenarios via the sex trafficking industry. All of this lessens the value of sex, which is meant to be enjoyable and shared within the sanctity of marriage.
Society wants you to think that porn is normal and not harmful. This paragraph from Fight the New Drug sums it up well,
“From popular porn sites putting up billboards in New York City’s Times Square to sites like BuzzFeed normalizing porn with viral videos, it feels like porn is taking over. Porn is plastered all over social media sites like Tumblr (though not anymore as of December 2018) and Instagram, and it’s too easy to see on Twitter considering the Twitterverse is home to an estimated 10+ million porn accounts. “
How to Counter and Strengthen Your Marriage
As society continues to inundate your marriage with porn, you need to fight back. The answer: don’t participate. Talk with your husband about porn use. If need be, discuss controls that can be put in place to ensure material isn’t accessed on laptops, phones, etc. Consider getting a counselor or setting up time with your pastor as well.
The organization, Fight the New Drug is a great resource for stats. Review this article 20 Mind-Blowing Stats About the Porn Industry and Its Underage Consumers with your husband. Reviewing it together may help disarm him on the subject. The goal of the conversation isn’t to shame him, but to review the facts – porn is harmful to those involved and to marriage. Your mutual goal is to strengthen your marriage, together.
Extreme Feminism
The Societal Trend
Today’s feminism has crossed into territory that no longer exemplifies the value that females bring to the table, but, instead, emasculates every aspect of men in an attempt to “replace” him. Society tells women they don’t need a man for anything.
An excerpt from DIVORCE: we discuss some of the “whys” behind women leaving their marriages and tips on how to go from dividing to thriving helps unpack this:
“I considered myself a strong woman: independent, educated, ambitious, etc. There are lots of “me’s” around. You’re probably one of them. Because of this, women are outpacing men in careers, earnings growth, leadership roles, even down to hedge fund management.
History holds an ugly picture of an entire group of society that was once discounted and devalued. Since, great achievement has been won on behalf of women, continuing into current day. But this post isn’t about the past. This is about the ‘now’. It’s about the reality. And the reality is, it’s women who are contributing to the end of the family unit. We are slowly breaking down the very thing that God placed in our care.
Before we get into speculation, let’s look at the facts.
The divorce rate in the US is around 50% and has been for what seems like forever. But, did you know that over two thirds of divorces initiated are actually done so by women?”
How It Hurts Marriage
I get it. Marriage is HARD!! Society tells women they don’t need a man, they can do everything themselves, they shouldn’t settle on anything, there’s a perfect match out there for them or there’s no match and they shouldn’t bother with marriage anyway. The reality is marriage is TWO imperfect beings. This doesn’t seem to be part of the message. Instead, it continues to degrade men for all of their shortcomings without recognizing that women are not finished products either.
How to Counter and Strengthen Your Marriage
If you haven’t yet, I really encourage you to read this article DIVORCE: we discuss some of the “whys” behind women leaving their marriages and tips on how to go from dividing to thriving. There are three “strong woman tips” that help you use your strength as a woman to make your marriage thrive versus divide. Here’s a quick overview (the article has great resources linked in):
- Marriage isn’t going to unfold according to your will. Rick Warren, in his 5 Biblical Purposes of Marriage, says, “marriage isn’t to make you happy, it’s to make you holy.” Really let that sink in. Now, this isn’t an excuse for men’s poor behavior. Instead, it’s to understand you and your husband should help grow each other. Neither of you are “finished products” in your current state.
- This point has been one of the hardest for me to swallow, but it radiates truth. Do not hold your spouse to standards that you cannot achieve yourself. I know I’m not perfect. I could even make a list right now of all the ways I suck at life, daily. You husband is the same. Have some grace. You wouldn’t want him walking around with a list of your imperfections, shaming you for them. Don’t do that to him.
- The last point is about educating yourself on the value of men in the household. Even as imperfect specimens, they are INVALUABLE to you AND your children. Statistically speaking, children who come from fatherless homes experience, more than their counter parts, a lack of education, teen pregnancy, mental and behavioral disorders, homelessness, suicides, crime, poverty, more likely to experience abuse (physically, sexually), more likely to abuse substances or alcohol. Just know, your decision impacts far beyond your immediate contentment.
Another Perspective
I thought this excerpt from The Federalist was really relatable, as it references Andrea Miller from Your Tango. She explains:
“Too often these women — even the strongest, smartest, most independent of them — weirdly believe that if they inflict enough pain back onto their partners or exact enough control of them, they’ll suddenly get with the program. Instead, the opposite usually happens. Their partners — not feeling loved enough and tired of feeling nagged, controlled, and criticized — do the opposite. They withdraw and tune out. And the cycle of drama and dysfunction only becomes more vicious and protracted.”
Miller goes on to explain that after realizing that the pain she was inflicting upon her spouse wasn’t making either of them happy, she tried something else: tenderness, less judgment and punishment, and more affection. The results, she explains, were brilliant.
“I started tuning much more actively into my husband — prioritizing him, touching him regularly (holding his hand, sitting very close to him, hugging him, rubbing his shoulders, etc), more actively praising and appreciating him, and — crucially — not letting my ego get the best of me and not letting my need to be right lead to Armageddon. As a result, I have managed to bring out the best in my husband.”
Continue to be on the lookout for ways social trending could be hurting your marriage. Marriage will always be challenging because it deals with two broken and imperfect people. I like the analogy of coffee cups – you can’t bang two coffee cups together without spilling coffee on one another. Same with people – you can’t be that close to someone else without some of their mess spilling on you and vice versa. But instead of letting society tell you, “it’s too hard, just give up” stand firm in your faith and in your marriage. It’s totally worth it!
