Season: 10 Episode: 150
Listen to episode 146 in Spanish:
Summary:
Should a husband and wife divulge all of their baggage to each other, especially before they get married? What is baggage? If something can be carried it can be put down. But that means it must be dealt with. Shanda talks about the three types of baggage that can crush a marriage and what you can do to make sure it doesn’t. Choosing to love your spouse means you sacrifice how you feel for what’s best for the marriage. How do you do that? All of these questions are discussed and answered so you know how to deal with baggage in your marriage.
Recommended Resources:
Cross Examined Article: Is Teaching Your Kids About God Child Abuse?
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Today we’re talking about baggage in marriage and what if couples should tell each other everything about their past before they get married to avoid conflict. I received an email a few weeks ago from a listener who said she’s in her fifties and newly married and her new husband recently found out some things about her past and it has created some distrust and conflict. They’ve only been married for a few months and apparently he didn’t know about her past before they got married. She said he’s a Christian but doesn’t read his bible, so he’s struggling to see that her past is not who she is anymore. So now what? What can they do to get them through this? She said he had her up on a pedestal as a Christian woman and now he’s very upset.
So what do you do when you bring baggage into the marriage?
When you get engaged, should you tell your husband about your past or do you say, “Well, God saved me and I’m, not that person anymore?” Isn’t that a good question? Because some people will say they’re spouse doesn’t need to know because it’s history and not who they are anymore. Some will say you shouldn’t have any secrets or anything your spouse doesn’t know. It’s tricky, right? So here’s what we’re going to talk about today:
- What is baggage and how is it carried into a relationship (marriage)?
- What constitutes a secret in a marriage and should there be any your spouse doesn’t know?
- 1 Corinthians 13 teaches us how to be a better spouse by choosing to love our spouse even when we’re not feeling it.
Before we get into today’s episode, this is the last call for the Women of Worth event on May 10th at Tremont Church of God in Easley, SC. Go to https://mytremont.churchcenter.com/registr…/events/2265515to register. You get dinner and a great time of fellowship for only $10. Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please leave a 5 star rating and review. It’s the only way to help get the podcast into the earbuds of others and I would really appreciate it!
Baggage
We call anything we can’t get over and continue to carry throughout the years – baggage. The older you are, the more baggage you will have. That’s just life. And if you get married when you’re older, the more baggage you will carry into that relationship because you’ve lived longer. Most of the time, the baggage is emotional – things that bother you, the way you handle your emotions, the things you get emotional over. Baggage is something we continue to deal with because if you can carry it, you can lay it down. That means you have to be able to identify your baggage.
The best way to identify baggage is to identify the things you can’t get over. When someone says something to you that brings up an unforgiven event, you can’t wait to unload on them.
People might call this baggage, but it’s really just unforgiveness.
You’re harboring things in your relationships that have not been dealt with and if you move on from that relationship without dealing with it, you will carry it into the next one. We talked about this in the God Hates Divorce episode.
Remember, what we call baggage is something we carry into relationships with us and if you can carry it you can lay it down. I think sometimes people kid themselves and say they’re over past hurts or they can easily move on from past hurts but they have not dealt with it.
Saying you’ve moved on is not the same as dealing with the hurt.
We’ll talk about how to do that soon.
One Focus on the Family article say language like, ‘You always …” or, “You never …” should be an indicator that there are some unresolved issues that you have not dealt with. AKA, baggage.
Now remember, I’m not a counselor or psychologist and I will bring everything back to the Bible, but marriage is difficult because you’re dealing with two sinful people. You are gong to get angry at your spouse. You are going to get your feelings hurt. That’s marriage; that’s relationships.
But one psychology said the three types of baggage that can crush your marriage are:
Childhood baggage
Financial baggage
Relationship baggage
Again, if you get married young (which is what I suggest, if possible, as long as you’re equally yolked and both of you are walking in a relationship with the Lord), you won’t have that much baggage. But we are all imperfect human beings so there will always be something to work on. But we’re specifically talking about baggage and defining what that is.
So let’s look at each one of these areas of baggage that can crush your marriage.
Childhood Baggage
No one’s family is perfect and everyone’s family is dysfunctional in some way. Dysfunction means abnormal or healthy behavior in a group. So from time to time, there’s going to be some dysfunction. And if you come from a divorced home, you obviously came from a dysfunctional family. Based on the stats from the God Hates Divorce episode, children have major issues as a result of divorce.
You’ve also heard of the term – daddy issues. When children grow up without a dad or with an absent father, females especially, tend to look for male attention, even if it’s negative and unhealthy. This is baggage that is taken into a relationship and it likely will cause more baggage.
If there is abuse in your childhood that leads to distrust, that creates baggage.
There is a lot to this and if it’s not dealt with, it will be baggage you carry into your relationships and it tends to affect how you see your spouse, treat your spouse, and conduct your own family affairs within the home.
There’s a lot more to be said about this, but I’m not a psychologist. But we will discuss what the Bible says about how to deal with some of the issues that arise from these things.
Financial Baggage
I think out of all of the baggage, this one is the easiest to fix but I don’t know that it’s the easiest to keep fixed if the person has a spending problem. So it depends on the debt and the habits of the couple. However, financial baggage is the debt you bring into the relationship. It’s the credit card debt, credit score, school loans, car loans, etc, etc. So when you get married, the debit is taken on by the spouse. Again, easier to clean up if you tackle it together, but the debit didn’t accumulate over night. This is going to be something that requires habit changes and laying it all out on the table, budgeting, and all of those kinds of talks.
Relationship Baggage
This one can be complicated because the more partners you’ve had, the more baggage you’ll have. If you’ve been divorced before, you have emotional baggage you’re taking into the next relationship. There’s no other way around it.
Relationship baggage is unresolved emotional baggage you take into a new relationship. It’s the habits you’ve created in other relationships that you bring into new relationships that you’ve created with someone else. The older you get, the more set in your ways you become and these things become how you handle situations and deal with the issues in your new relationship.
Again, the more relationships you have and sexual partners you have, the more baggage you will carry into these relationships. But again, if something can be carried, it can be put down. So how do you do that? You have to deal with it.
The question is: do you have to tell your spouse about your baggage?
Some people think their past is none of their spouse’s business because they either aren’t that person anymore or weren’t in the picture when these relationships took place. But is that setting your marriage up for failure or success? I guess it depends on the issue. Although God does save and sanctify us, I believe we have to be careful what we withhold from our spouse’s regarding our past because although sin is forgiven, there are still consequences of sin.
A lot of times people think that because God has forgiven them for things, we won’t feel the repercussions or consequences of our sin and in some cases that’s true but in other cases it’s not. Galatians 6: 7-8 says “Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, 8 because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.” Now again, we’re not talking about God’s forgiveness. He does forgive and does not hold anything against us. But we still have to deal with some of the consequences at times. I mean, think about it. We’re still dealing with the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin even though they were forgiven.
If you want a healthy marriage, there has to be trust.
I have heard of some couples agreeing to allow the past to stay in the past and they do not bring it up. If you can do that and say our lives began on our wedding day and we will trust each other from here on out as we commit ourselves to each other, good. But that has to be communicated. If you want to lay it out on the table because you know the “baggage” of those past relationships might affect your marriage, that has to be communicated.
I did research this question about sharing your past relationships with your spouse and the information is conflicting. Some say you should and some say you shouldn’t. I think it depends on what it is and it depends on your relationship. Again, the most important thing about your marriage is being able to trust each other and work through past hurts – even if your spouse isn’t the reason for your baggage.
Either way, communication is key. If past issues are going to come up because the baggage involves children from another person, debts, past abuse that affects your intimacy with your spouse, these things must be communicated so that you can work through them together rather than allow the baggage to bog down your marriage and tear you apart.
Secrets in marriage?
Since we’re on the topic of what to divulge to your spouse regarding baggage, I also wanted to touch on secrets in marriage. Should spouses keep secrets from each other? I’ve talked about this before but it’s been a few years. But let me remind you of the purpose of marriage.
Marriage is a covenant between the husband, wife, and God. The foundation of marriage is built on the fact that God has united them as one flesh both spiritually and physically. This three way union is the foundation for a godly marriage. So if you are a Christian, think of your marriage this way: does this action constitute a godly marriage? That should be the purpose for how we treat our spouse.
Keeping secrets is not godly because it ruins trust.
After my last episode on divorce, Albert texted me and reminded me that love is a choice. It is not an emotion or a feeling. Albert says, “Western ideology leads us to accept that you fall in love, then get married. The Bible emphasizes that after you marry, love your spouse.”
That will seem very odd to us because we choose our spouse because we fall in love with them, but again – if love is a choice and not an emotion, then the goo goo feeling of butterflies and goosebumps is not how we describe love. That’s infatuation. I love to take 1 Corinthians 13 and put them into categories of what love is and what love is not.
This does not only pertain to marriage, so don’t get me wrong. It describes agape love – self sacrificial love. So we are going to do this activity and as we do, I want you to consider this: if self-sacrifice love is what God calls us to, is keeping things from your spouse for your good or for their good? A lot of times, we withhold things because we don’t want to talk about it. But that’s selfish. If it’s a hard conversation that benefits the marriage and nurturers trust or helps you move in the direction of healing together, it must be talked about.
Love is – Love is not …
Let’s first read the passage and then we’ll categorize the description of love:
If I speak human or angelic tongues[a] but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, 5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. 6 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends.
Love is:
Patient
Kind
Rejoices in the truth.
Bears all things.
Believes alll things.
Hopes all things.
Endures all things.
Never ends (fails).
Before we tackle the “love is not” category, let’s look at these for a minute.
You could do a word study or look up each of these for depth and study, but let’s just think on them for a minute.
Patience is a fruit of the spirit. So is love. So these are not descriptions of love according to the world’s standards. Marriage is meant to sanctify us. It is self-sacrificial. We talked about this in episode 233. If you need patience in your marriage, ask the Lord because it is a fruit we bear as we are attached to the vine (Christ). Kindness is also a fruit of the spirit. Kindness is a virtue that helps us not to answer harshly. It helps think of our spouse’s needs and extend a kind word when a harsh answer would be easy. I often remind myself that when I am impatient with others, it’s a reflection of my relationship with God. It causes me to go to the Lord and examine my relationship with Him. I think this is helpful in our marriages too.
Love rejoices in the truth.
That means we are honest with each other. We come together to get to the bottom of the issues in our marriage. We don’t keep secrets and we are honest because when you rejoice in the truth, you can easily trust one another.
And if love bears all things, that means it bears hard things. We only have to bear something that feels heavy and hard. But when you choose to love, you choose to bear the load together.You believe that even when it’s hard, you can get through it because love believes all things. And if love hopes all things, that means you hope that your marriage can be repaired and the Lord can work it out because love does not fail.
Love is not …
When I do this activity, I usually start where Paul actually says, “Love does not envy.” But Paul actually began telling us what love isn’t in the first few verses above this. He said that love is not how eloquently you speak. He says human tongues or tongues of angels. I think of this way – you can be as poetic and articulate was Shakespeare. That doesn’t mean you love. That just means you make a lot of noise. Proverbs 31:30 says that charm is deceitful. Charm is flattery and all the right words. But it’s really manipulative. It’s not loving.
Next, Paul says you can be intellectual, and have the utmost understanding of things the average person does not understand. But if you don’t have love, your intellect is nothing.
What’s it food for?
He said you can be the most generous and giving person. You can even sacrifice yourself to the best of causes, but if it’s without love – you have no gain in. I mentioned the church in Ephesus in Revelation in episode 234 and how to rekindle the love. But these few verses here describe that church – they did all the right things, hated false teachings and all of that – but they left their first love. So their works profited nothing.
And then we get to the obvious:
Love does not envy. It’s to be jealous over someone else’s success or advantages, or possessions. Wanting what others have will naturally put a wedge between you. I don’t know if husbands and wives compete over possessions since they share everything, but when it comes to making decisions and wanting what you want, it can happen.
Love does not boast. Boasting is connected to pride. It’s self-centered and puffs oneself up. It’s connected to envy in that it talks about your accomplishments, and success but in a way that rubs it in to the person who hasn’t accomplished what you have. It sets itself above others.
Love is not rude. What does it mean to be rude? It means to be impolite or ill-mannered. I think of obnoxious people who aren’t considerate of what they say or how they act. It’s not only about how you look when you’re rude it’s how you make others feel. Is your joke at someone else’s expense? Do you put your feet in someone’s furniture? Do you allow others to get in line first, hold the door open for others and wait just a little longer while they make their way inside?
Love is not …
Love is not self-seeking. Again, when applying this to marriage, it’s not about how your spouse doesn’t meet your expectations because you want what you want. It’s about understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses and balancing each other out by making up for the other one’s lack. I mean, this is hard. It’s easy to be self-seeking and it takes an awareness of self to not be.
Love is not irritable. This means you are easily annoyed or angry. Again, this is linked to patience. If you’re patient, you’re probably not consistently irritable. Again, this is speaking to me because I am imagining myself when I don’t get enough sleep. It’s not pretty.
And finally, love keeps no record of wrongs.
This is a huge one for the baggage issue. How many times do you get into arguments and you bring up what happened 3 years ago? This is closely linked to forgiveness and healing, and if you have truly forgiven someone, you have to stop bringing up the wrongs of the past. Now, I know these things are not easy. They’re really hard asks. But again, the way love is displayed has a lot to do with the fruits of the spirit being produced in our lives. This is something we have to go to God for.
I used to be more of a grudge holder and my husband can let something go in a second. I like to talk things out and he likes to move right on past it. It’s the way we were raised. But since we’ve been married, I’ve learned that not everything requires a conversation before you get over it. And he’s learned that some things have to be addressed so we don’t continue in those habits. It takes learning each other and learning how to handle conflict and issues. But once something has been addressed, to rehash it again and again can be detrimental to your marriage. You have to decide to lay it down at some point or you’re just keeping records of wrongs and your arguments are going to turn into comparing lists rather than resolving conflict.
Close:
The main point of this episode is to discuss the baggage we take into marriage and what we need to disclose to our spouse (more so our fiancé) as we launch into this holy covenant of marriage with them. Is it fair to keep things for our spouse that might one day come up and blindside them if they don’t know? Is it fair to keep things that might affect your relationship with them because you have had a hard childhood or emotional and financial baggage that may cause trust issues?
I think as long as we remember how to show love to our spouse and to think of them and their well being in all of this, not just how these things make us feel to talk about it, then we will know what to do in those moments. And for the big issues that you and your spouse can’t seem to handle without some advice, talk to your pastor or an older and wise couple in your church who can help walk you through it. It’s so good, necessary, and biblical to have wise mentors in the church family who can help us in our marriages.
Finally, I want to remind you that 1 Corinthians 13 is not just for husbands and wives.
It’s agape love – the kind of love we display to all people, including our kids. And that’s what we’re going to talk about in the next episode – how to create an environment in our homes that nurtures our children to be who God created them to be. I think you’re going to love it. I do love talking about these things because God made family and He gave parents influence over their children so that moms and dads can raise godly children who shine bright in this dark world. If you have any questions for me, email me at hello@shandafulbright.com, and I’ll catch you on the next one.
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