Love Is Not Enough

I Love You More: How Everyday Problems Can Strengthen Your Marriage
by Les Parrott III, Ph.D., Dr. Leslie Parrott

Relationship experts and award-winning authors Les and Leslie Parrott believe the same forces that can tear down a marriage can become the catalyst for new relational depth and richness--provided you learn the secrets to using everyday problems to strengthen your marriage. In this book they explore how a marriage survives and thrives when a couple learns to use problems to boost their love life, to literally love each other more.

How to make the thorns in your marriage come up roses.

The big and little annoyances in your marriage are actually opportunities to deepen your love for each other. Relationship experts and award-winning authors Les and Leslie Parrott believe that your personal quirks and differences — where you squeeze the toothpaste tube, how you handle money — can actually help draw you together provided you handle them correctly.

Turn your marriage's prickly issues into opportunities to love each other more as you learn how to ? build intimacy while respecting personal space ? tap the power of a positive marriage attitude ? replace boredom with fun, irritability with patience, busyness with time together, debt with a team approach to your finances . . . and much, much more.

Plus — get an inside look at the very soul of your marriage, and how connecting with God can connect you to each other in ways you never dreamed.

Chapter 1

A marriage survives and thrives when a couple learns
to use problems to their advantage.

All beginnings are lovely.
French proverb

Two days after our wedding in Chicago, Les and I were nestled into a cottage, surrounded by towering timbers along the picturesque Oregon coast. A few miles to the south of us were the famous coastal sand dunes where we planned to ride horses later that week. And up the coast was a quaint harbor village where we thought we might spend another day leisurely looking at shops and eating our dinner by candlelight in a rustic inn some friends recommended. Other than that, we had nothing on our itinerary for the next five days except enjoying the beach and each other, rain or shine.

Neither of us could have dreamed up a scenario that would have been better for our honeymoon. Not that everything was perfect. For starters, we accidentally locked ourselves out of our rental car the day after we arrived. I was commenting on how the sun was trying to poke its way out of some clouds when Les realized the keys were in the ignition and all the doors were locked.

"You stay here in the cabin," Les said, taking his first stab at being an everything's-under-control kind of husband. "I'm going to walk to that filling station on the main road and get some help."

"I'll go with you," I responded.

"Are you sure? It might rain."

"It'll be fun; let's go."

We walked and talked the two or three miles to find a pay phone, where we made arrangements for the locksmith to pick us up and take us back to our car. Sitting on a curb, we waited, saying nothing. Les was fiddling with a stick he'd picked up on our walk when I realized several minutes had passed and neither of us had said a word. It was an easy stillness, though; a kind of eloquent voicelessness where we were content, comfortable, to not talk.

Whoso loves believes the impossible. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I think it was there and then, quietly sitting on a curb next to a phone booth under a cloudy sky, that the thought hit me like a ray of light. I had captured true love. The thing I'd been chasing ever since I was old enough to know it could be sought was now in my possession. I had married a man who loved me deeply, just as I loved him. We committed ourselves to love together, forever. Love's ethereal mysteries were now unfolding before my very eyes. Its elusive qualities were fading. True love was no longer out of reach. The very opposite, in fact, was true. While I stood by doing nothing, love was enveloping my being. I'm not talking about the dizzying effects of falling in love that happen in the early starry-eyed stages of a new relationship. Les and I had dated for nearly seven years before we found ourselves married and honeymooning on the Oregon coast.

The love I'm talking about experiencing that day was cleareyed and grounded. There was no sunset on the horizon, no piped-in background music. This was reality and I was simply taking it in, relishing the silence and stillness of having no other purpose than that of being together. Husband and wife. We had created a marriage. And it was good. So good was this love we had at the beginning that we could practically live on it. And we did, for a time.

Can We Keep a Good Thing Going?

Like most couples deeply in love, Les and I longed to find ways to make our love endure even before we were married. Part of the impetus for our vision came from reading A Severe Mercy, the real-life love story about Sheldon and Davy Vanauken, two lovers who not only dreamed about building a soulful union, but devised a concrete strategy for doing so that they called their "Shining Barrier." Its goal: to make their love invulnerable. Its plan: to share everything. Everything! If one of them liked something, they decided, there must be something to like in it — and the other must find it. Whether it be poetry, strawberries, or an interest in ships, Sheldon and Davy committed to share every single thing either of them liked. That way they would create a thousand strands, great and small, that would link them together. They reasoned that by sharing everything they would become so close that it would be impossible, unthinkable, for either of them to suppose that they could ever recreate such closeness with anyone else. Total sharing, they felt, was the ultimate secret of a love that would last forever.

There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage. Martin Luther

To be the watch upon the walls of the Shining Barrier, Sheldon and Davy established what they called the Navigators' Council. It was an inquiry into the state of their union. More than once a month they would intentionally talk about their relationship and evaluate their activities by asking, Is this best for our love?

It's a great question. Why not raise the Shining Barrier as Sheldon and Davy did? Why not create a shield to protect one's love? After all, who hasn't seen the soul of a marriage perish because the couple took love for granted? Ceasing to do things together, finding separate interests, many couples turn their "we" into "I" as their love becomes lifeless. Even before we were married we observed a subtle separateness creeping into some marriages with barely a notice — each of them going off to their separate jobs in separate worlds, while their apartness was quietly tearing at their union. Why let this happen to us? Why not raise the Shining Barrier?

Something about guarding against losing the glory of love struck a chord with us — just as it does with every couple on the brink of marriage. But is it possible? Is it within the realm of human capability to keep love always protected from harm? And even if it were, is love enough to sustain a marriage? The answer, in our opinion, is no. And the Vanauken story proves it. Sheldon and Davy did everything possible to preserve their love, but in the end, they couldn't. Death stole their togetherness as Davy lay dying in a hospital bed.

We'll say it again. Love cannot protect a marriage from harm, and love, by itself, is not enough to sustain even the most loving couples.

Exercise 1: Taking Inventory of Your Marriage

Before progressing further into this chapter, we urge you to take inventory of the good and the bad in your relationship. This initial exercise will set the stage for the work you do in chapters to come. The exercise is found in the accompanying I Love You More Workbooks (note that there is one workbook for husbands and another one for wives). The exercise will help you and your partner identify what is currently making your love life tougher than it needs to be and what is already helping you make it better.

© 2006 Zondervan. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Dr. Les Parrott is a master communicator, having impacted people from all walks of life including executives, international government officials, professional athletes and college students. His charisma, humor and practical advice have placed him in high demand as a conference and seminar speaker. He has spoken internationally to a variety of groups including corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, Price Waterhouse, the armed services, and associations of professional athletes. His breakneck schedule takes him across North America and around the world.

Dr. Leslie Parrott is a marriage and family therapist and codirector with her husband, Dr. Les Parrott, of the Center for Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University. She is the author of God Made You Nose to Toes, and coauthor with her husband of several bestselling books, including The Complete Guide to Marriage Mentoring, Relationships, Love Talk, and the Gold Medallion Award-winner, Saving Your Marriage before It Starts. Leslie is a columnist for Today's Christian Woman and has been featured on Oprah, CBS Morning, CNN, and The View, and in USA Today and he New York Times. The Parrotts' radio program, Love Talk, is carried by stations throughout North America. Leslie lives in Seattle with her husband and their two sons.