The Top 5: Indicators That Your Relationship Will Last

I was heading into Lexington last Friday morning, and I happened to be listening to some random morning show on the radio. It was all relatively uninteresting, until they played a game called “best request wins,” where people call in totally random, old-school song requests. The winning request was Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson. Seriously. A little classic MJ on a Friday morning is just plain duhhhhh winning.

And then it happened. The teaser for the next segment: “Stay tuned and we’ll tell you the top 5 indicators of whether or not your relationship is going to work.”

No I will not stay tuned.

I see this kind of “Cosmo-magazine checklist” as a huge problem in our culture, especially for young people. External factors do not determine the outcome of a relationship. Your commitment to the relationship does. If you are looking out for yourself, if your fear outweighs your faith, then you will find any reason on any checklist or gossip circle to abandon ship. In the same way, even the most loving, affectionate, and honest couples can find themselves in divorce court when pride, selfishness, and sin creep in.

Do you want to know if your relationship will last? Decide that it will. How did I know that Erica was the girl I was going to marry? I chose her.* How do I know that our marriage vows will last? Because we choose to live in that covenant.

I screw up. I hurt her in ways that I never would have intended. I lose my temper. She does the same to me. It’s quite horrible sometimes what we can do to each other.

And then we choose to forgive. We choose the covenant relationship. We choose to submit ourselves to each other. And living in that kind of grace and intimacy is the greatest thing in the world.

I’ll say it again. There are always reasons and excuses to leave a relationship and let it fall apart. Sometimes, there are even very good reasons for that. Sometimes, one person wants what the other doesn’t, and that obviously doesn’t work very well. If you are pursuing a relationship just for fun or without any real intention of committing yourself to that person, then don’t have high hopes. I know I am simplifying an issue here that can be very, very difficult and emotional. Trust me, I know. I have had close friends and family go through divorce and difficult breakups, for a variety of reasons. I love them very much and would not wish that on anyone. But those circumstances all come down to one truth: one, or both, of the people in that relationship chose to break the covenant. He/she/they chose self over the other. And that is not how it works. It never will.

Do you want to know real top 5 indicators that your relationship will last? Here is the checklist:

1. You chose to willingly submit yourself in love to the other person in a covenant commitment.
2. He/she does the same.
3. You fight to keep that covenant as if your very lives depend on it.
4. You fight to keep that covenant as if your very lives depend on it.
5. You fight to keep that covenant as if your very lives depend on it.

Tonight I get to go do some relationship Q&A with a group of high school girls. My hope is that even one of them would begin to understand that a lasting relationship is never about emotion or desire or self or things promised. It is always about submission, commitment, and a death to self. I hope even one can begin to understand not to look to culture (i.e. Cosmo or radio morning show hosts or iPhone apps**) for relationship advice, but instead to look to the One who established a covenant relationship with us, long before we ever knew it and despite the fact that we never deserved it.

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* And she chose me right back.

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