Andy Stanley - The Couple's Guide to Happiness that Lasts
Hi everybody. Welcome to "Your Move" where we help you make better decisions and live with fewer regrets. I'm Andy Stanley, and today I'm gonna tell you something that every happy couple knows. So if you're part of a couple, if you wanna go the distance as a couple, or if you're still looking for your person and when you meet 'em, you're hoping for a happily ever after ending, stick around. Now, while I'm no marriage or relationship expert, I have been happily married for 36 years. Sandra and I have three kids, and all three of our kids are married and all three of them would tell you that they are leaning into what they saw modeled in our home, especially what I wanna talk about today.
So while I don't claim to know everything there is to know about a mutually satisfying relationship, I know a few things. And here's one thing I know for certain, if you're married or if you're in a relationship that's moving toward marriage, you and your partner have three things in common. You have hopes, dreams, and desires. They may not be the identical hopes, dreams, and desires, but you both have hopes, dreams, and desires for your relationship, right? And now think about it this way. It's like both of you carry around an invisible box filled with your hopes, dreams, and desires. They include what you hope for in the relationship in terms of how it feels, what it behaves like, what your future holds, what you expect your partner to do to ensure that your hopes, dreams, and desires are fulfilled, right?
The items in your box represent your definition of happiness. If I get what I hope for out of this relationship, if I get what I desire out of this relationship, I'll be happy, right? Our dreams and desires actually encompass a variety of categories too, like lifestyle, location, children, how many children, income, sex, friends, travel roles, you know, who does what and when, how you expect to be treated in private and how you expect to be treated in public. It's pretty much everything you picture when you imagine life together, including how you handle conflict on the off chance that there's ever any conflict to handle.
Anyway, while it's natural to show up on day one with your box, your box of hopes, dreams, and desires, that box actually creates a potential problem because the common denominator for everything in your box is you. I mean, those are your hopes, your dreams, your desires for the relationship, right? Which is fine, except that early on in the relationship you're going to attempt to hand your box to your significant other. And they of course, in turn will hand their box to you. And that's when the fun begins. Actually, that's usually when the fun ends, it ends because the assumption is they're going to make all of your hopes, all of your dreams come true because they're here for you.
But of course, they're expecting you to make their box a reality as well. And if the items in your boxes aren't identical, which they rarely are, well, that's when you hope your approach to conflict resolution is similar because, well, you're about to have some conflict to resolve, but there's more and important more. While your hopes, dreams, and desires for your relationship feel like a path to happiness for you, if you hand your partner, your box, what feels like happiness to you, feels like something else to your partner, it feels like expectations. Your box weighs about two pounds when you're holding it, but it feels like 50 pounds once you hand it to them.
And the opposite is true as well, right? If they hand you their box, it feels like a weight you're forced to carry. That's just the nature of expectations. And the problem is expectations and unmet expectations. Well, they're kryptonite to a relationship. They're kryptonite to romance for sure, and thus, they're kryptonite to relational satisfaction. Expectations and unmet expectations do not lead to a mutually satisfying relationship at best, they lead to a relationship characterized by compromise, score keeping, checking up on 'em. I did it last time, it's your term this time, and compromise might sound like a win to you but it's not.
Compromise, think about it. Compromise is for negotiated settlements between two parties who eventually just go their separate ways once the deal is done, it's no way to conduct a relationship, especially a marriage relationship. Compromise might make things tolerable or endurable, but come on, nobody wants to be tolerated or endured. That's just dreadful. And it's why people eventually go their separate ways. And what do people take with them when they go their separate ways? Their box. And where do they carry it? Right in to the next relationship. Relationally speaking, compromise is really a form of peacekeeping, but compromise does not kindle intimacy because intimacy is fueled by trust, and trust, well, trust doesn't keep score.
Now, a compromise is one approach to settling the battle of the boxes, there is a worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is a one-sided relationship where one person insists on having their way and the other person just devotes themselves to becoming everything and doing everything their partner expects them to be and expects them to do. They're forced to abandon their own hopes, dreams, and desires to satisfy their partner's hopes, dreams, and desires. But even then, did you know even then, neither person is actually happy in the relationship, including the person who's getting their way.
They aren't happy because a one-sided relationship is not a healthy relationship. It is void of the two ingredients essential to a mutually satisfying relationship, gratitude and sacrifice. And a one-sided, if you work my box, I'll ignore yours, things are just expected, gratitude is always in short supply, which takes a toll. When gratitude is in short supply, the person carrying the load feels invisible. When a desire becomes an expectation, when a dream becomes a demand, well, if you've been there, you know, and if you are there, stay with me because there is a way forward. So here's what happy couples know. You ready? Happy couples know they owe each other everything, but they are owed nothing in return.
Happy couples know that they owe the other person everything but they are owed nothing in return. That's how happy couples keep their hopes, dreams and desires from becoming expectations. That's how you keep expectations in check. That's how you keep gratitude alive. That's how you rekindle and refuel intimacy in the relationship. That's how you move from all about me, to all about we, and happy couples communicate what's in their box. Did you know that? But they don't hand it off, but keep it, they carry it. Then they go to work making what's in their partner's box a reality, they wake up every morning assuming that they owe each other everything, but are owed nothing in return. That's what happy couples do. It's why they're happy.
Now, full disclosure, none of this is original with me. It actually comes from the teaching and the life of Jesus, but you don't have to be a religious person to apply it. In fact, you may have grown up in a non-religious home where you actually saw this modeled, right? But having said that, one of Jesus' first century followers, the Apostle Paul, taking his cue from something Jesus taught wrote the following, he wrote, "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus".
That is approach your relationships like Jesus approached His relationships. And what was His approach to relationships? Others first. Follow Jesus through the Gospels. He did not come, He said to be served, but to serve and to give His life away on behalf of others. The same author, the Apostle Paul, actually applied this other's first principle to marriage. He wrote the following, he said, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ".
One another. Marriage should be characterized by mutual submission. In fact, when I teach this, I say that marriage is actually a submission competition. It's a race to the back of the line. It's mutual. And when both people participate, well, happy couples know this is definitely the way to go. because couples don't drift toward happiness because the gravitational pull of the human heart is towards, well, it's towards me first, not others first. My box, my hopes, my dreams, my desires, right? So happy couples choose their way to happiness. They choose happiness by choosing to put the other person first.
So here's a question. What's in your box? What's in your box? And does your spouse or fiance know it's in your box? Have you left them guessing? Is there something in you that thinks that you shouldn't have to tell them because well, they should just be able to figure this out. And if they really loved you, they would figure it out on their own. Read your mind. Did you know that's unrealistic, and it's unfair, and it's selfish? They can't love you the way you desire to be loved if they don't know what you want, what you hope for, and what you desire.
So just tell 'em, and you can tell them without it coming across as an expectation. Don't hand them your box. Just let 'em know what's in there. And then ask for theirs. Do you know what's in your partner's box? Have you ever asked? Are you afraid to ask because of what they might say? Are you embarrassed that you don't already know?
So just ask them. Tell them you heard some guy talking about this invisible box of hopes, dreams, and desires, and well, you wanna make sure you know what's in their box. And this is important, that's not the time to tell them what's in your box unless they ask. Just save that for later. So what do happy couples know? They know they owe their partner everything, but they are owed nothing in return. And when both parties embrace that approach, well, it turns out that happily ever after isn't as out of reach as you may have imagined. And now it's your move.