“Love is at the forefront of the
experience of what it means to be human. We can choose to try to figure it out
on our own, or we can choose to see how the designer of love intended us to
experience all this. Loveology guides us straight into the heart of God, who
created this wonderous, powerful experience of love, romance, sex, marriage,
masculinity, and femininity.”
Dan Kimball
“My husband and I heard “loveology” at the
beginning of our relationship, and it changed our entire view on love and
dating. It exposed and shattered all the “Hollywood movie” lies that were
embedded in our minds and replaced them with God’s original design. Following
the Loveology principles gave our relationship a sense of direction, saved us
from making a lot of painful mistakes many couples make, and answered a ton of questions.”
Naomi and Isaiah
I didn’t
grow up in church, which means my view of relationships was partly formed by
culture and partly by my family background. I grew up with two parents who
loved each other deeply. My Mom and Dad did an excellent job at showing me what
a healthy marriage looks like as I was growing up. My parents are committed to
each other and love each other very well. For me, the negative influences came
through culture, not from my family.
I watched a
lot of Hollywood movies as a teenager which strongly influenced my view of love
and marriage. When you consume a lot of TV Shows and movies as a teenager the
media becomes much more than entertainment. The TV Shows and movies painted a
picture of what love, sex and romance was supposed to look like. I specifically
remember watching the movie American
Pie at age 14 and thinking to myself “I
need to fit myself into that type of lifestyle, that’s how it’s done.” Most
of the time we aren’t conscious of how much we are influenced by the media, but psychological research shows that we are strongly influenced by what we watch and
consume.
We are all
strongly affected by our parents’ relationship and pop culture media, another influencer is porn. I was 10 years old the first time my friends and I watched a
porn movie on VHS. You can imagine how much a young person’s view of sexuality
is influenced when you start watching porn long before you even hit puberty. I
don’t want my own kids and future generations to grow up the way I did, exposed
to the same destructive lies and distorted views of sex, romance, love and
marriage that formed me.
I got
married at 26 and at that point I had around 16 years of negative baggage that I
brought into my marriage. The more baggage you bring into your marriage the
harder you will need to work to overcome those negative past experiences that
have formed you. It’s totally possible to overcome your past, but it takes a lot
of hard work. I had multiple, short failed relationships before meeting my
husband, and he had a few long-term failed relationships before meeting me.
When we met and fell madly in love we didn’t want anything to ruin the love we had found. We decided to educate ourselves
about love and marriage because “doing things our own way” had led us both to
have failed relationships. The more we learned about God’s beautiful design for
love, romance, marriage and sex the more we realized why our own ways had not worked. Let me just say that God’s view of sex,
romance and love is very different from what porn, Hollywood
movies and culture at large are teaching us.
As a society
you could say that we are “bad at love”. Statistics show us that around 50% of
marriages fail in our modern society. Second and third marriages have even higher
chances of failure. Research also shows that couples who live together before
they get married have higher chance of divorce than those who move in together
after they get married. Couples who lived together before marriage see a 33% higher
rate of divorce than those who waited to live together until after they were
married. Most of us are fully aware of these depressing statistics,
but then there’s another type of shocking
statistic. There’s one group of people where research shows that less than 1% of them end up divorced. Man, I want to be a part of that group!!
Couples who
pray together on a regular basis have less than 1% chance of divorce. In other
words, not couples who attend church a few times a year, but couples who have
an active, thriving relationship with God and who seek God together. Those
statistics alone is enough to motivate me to prioritize taking time to pray together with my husband daily. In a society
where divorce is very common it’s obvious that “doing whatever you feel like” will
not lead to a healthy, thriving marriage. My relationship with my husband is
far too important for me to risk
messing it up. I want to continue to learn more about God’s beautiful plan for marriage
every year, and through that get better at loving my husband every day.
