By bro Lee Tian Seng
Many marriages are destroyed by bad habits. The impact of our bad habits on others is not as evident before marriage but when a couple starts living together, it can become extremely unbearable.
Some of us have bad hygiene habits. It could be that one does not brush his teeth or change his dirty clothes or bathe every day. Such habits could be formed when we were young. When you live on your own, it does not affect anyone, but now that you are married you need to consider your spouse.
Some of us do not spend our time wisely. When you are young and single, you can stay up as late as you want to and wake up any time without affecting others. You could laze and watch TV the whole day. However, when you are married, you need to use your time wisely because you need to spend time with your spouse and children, and clean up the house. You cannot expect your spouse to do all the cleaning.
Some of us have bad tempers or are too timid. You need to learn to control your anger or it will always cause problems at home. When one is too timid and cannot be assertive, then it would be difficult for you to handle the many challenges in marriage. We cannot afford to let our marriage relationships be affected by our erratic emotions and unhelpful attitudes.
The Bible teaches us that our love should be kind and not selfish. Couple will do well if they do not allow bad habits to irritate their spouses and disrupt family life.
1 Corinthians 13:4-5 – Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
We are also taught to show consideration for one another and to be concerned about others.
1 Peter 3:7 (ESV) - Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
Philippians 2:3-4 - Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
It is not easy to live together but let us not make it more difficult by being stubborn and continuing with our bad habits which are affecting our marriages.