So… You’re married… and you’re finding out (or know full well) just how difficult this thing is.

The. Hardest. Thing. Ever.

Right?

Marriage is hard, really hard.

There’s a reason that an entire industry, marriage counseling, exists, after all. If you are married, there is a good chance you have attended such counseling. If you did pre-marriage counseling, you may not remember much of what was discussed. I mean, at that point there was nothing that was going to deter you from getting married to the person sitting next to you, right? You might have given some mental ascent to the impending difficulties of becoming one with another person, but it’s likely that your “bulletproof love” filtered away much of what you were being told.

It may not have mattered. In my experience and observation, the challenges of marriage seem as massive waves crashing against the vessel of your marriage union – frequently barraging and threatening to capsize your love boat – whether there was counseling before, or during marriage, or not.

I’m no expert, and certainly not qualified myself as a counselor (who by the way, do amazing work), but I have managed to make enough mistakes with eyes open enough to learn a few things in almost 13 years of marriage. So, with that, allow me to humbly offer three such things you likely were not told before you got married (or after… or ever?) but that you should hear…

Learn to love your spouse’s spirit.

You were attracted to their looks, beauty, and outward appearance. You then fell in love with their intelligence or charm, personality or talents. This is a natural progression, and is very good. But there is more. Real Love is both given, and received from the deepest level of a person – beyond the body, and beyond the soul.

Love dwells in spirit. To really Love your spouse, you must see this, and learn to Love beyond the other, more outward parts of them – into their core – and Love their spirit.

To Love the spirit in someone transcends loving what he or she looks like, how they act, or what they do. It is not circumstantial to appearance or personality, yet, strangely, this spirit Love enhances how you see and relate to your spouse. It gives you new eyes to see them, the real them, perhaps for the first time, over and over again.

Know your spouse’s dream, and be a part of it coming true.

To live life without purpose is a prison. We all have one, a purpose, and are designed to live with an awareness of it, and a pursuit toward it. We all have been given a dream; a dream uniquely designed for only us, to be a part of fulfilling toward a larger, Eternal Purpose.

I hope you know your dream, and are living and pursuing it. But do you know your spouse’s dream?

A Significant element of Oneness and Unity in marriage is a tethering of dreams. Yours is theirs. Theirs is yours. Yes, you each still have unique dreams imprinted in you – awaiting discovery, pursuit and fulfillment – but you also now share a larger dream, one that only the two of you can fulfill, as One.

Your dream will never be fulfilled without the fulfillment of your spouse’s dream. Their dream will never be fulfilled without the fulfillment of your dream.

Your shared dream depends on the seeing of your individual dreams, and pursuing and fulfilling them, as One Big Dream.

Start making love… as worship.

Whether you believe in God, a god, or no god – you still worship. We all worship something or someone. Ultimately, we become One with what we worship.

I happen to believe that God is Spirit, and lives in me… and in my wife. We exist in a Oneness not only together, as husband and wife, but also in a Divine Oneness with God Himself. Life lived from this Oneness means that every part of Life, could be worship, when it is done with, and for the glory of God with me. As One with my spouse, our shared Life is worship, done with and for the glory of God, with us.

If you believe like I do, then, making love can take on a new, deeper meaning. Sex, more than any other act between humans, regardless of belief, has always taken on an elevated stature. Something spiritual happens beyond the physical taking place. If my first point resonates with you, perhaps you can begin to see why this is.

If sex, then, is ultimately a spiritual act, then it is a reflection of worship to He who is Spirit, One with and in us. In this way, a married couple, joined as One in the spirit, making love, is some crazy good worship.

Trust me… and try it.

So there you go. Three things you may not have heard from your marriage counselor, but that just might make the challenges and difficulties of marriage fade away into a realization of the beauty beyond.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? What other “advice” would you give to married couples that may go beyond what is commonly given?

[This post was written by Brandon Chase]

If you enjoyed it head over and check out his blog, he recently released his first ebook, titled: