What is the Posture of Your Marriage?

For eight years, I ran a private voice studio teaching. Regardless of talent or aptitude, the first few lessons were spent on posture. The parts of the body can only work in concert with each other when the body is held in the proper posture. Once addressed and subsequently fixed, you’d be amazed at how easily other vocal problems could be addressed. Posture mattered…a lot.

Posture matters in marriage, too. Some postures are worth pursuing while others are worth avoiding. So, let’s just take a look at a few that could help direct conversation between you and your spouse.

Face to Face: When we’re face to face, we’re focused on each other. In this posture, we communicate, we experience intimacy, and we work on our marriage. In this posture, we declare our marriage to be the singular most important human relationship we have and we engage.

When we’re face to face, the world around us fades. Regardless of our schedule or preference, if we do not experience this posture often, trouble is not far off. With the world warring against the very fabric of marriage, in addition to our own busyness chipping away at it from the inside, face to face is a must.

Shoulder to Shoulder: As we stand shoulder to shoulder, we labor for the gospel. We work to reach the lost, care for our neighbors and raise our children. We engage the world around us as we stand side by side and walk never forgetting that we walk together.

When we’re shoulder to shoulder, there is a strength about us. When we serve together we experience the same trials of faith and the same experiences of God’s providence. We experience the same obstacles, the same victories, the same needs for prayer. In all of this, we grow together in our experience of God.

The Challenge – Balance: If we are exclusively postured face to face, a marriage becomes self-focused. It becomes blinded to the world around it. The place of family and marriage becomes inordinately elevated to the exclusion of all else. However, if a marriage is exclusively shoulder to shoulder, much work will be done outside the home with growing atrophy within the home. The marriage relationship becomes centered on task rather than being. The love that is necessary for fruitful labor dies on the vine.

The couple that is tempted to remain face to face must frequently turn shoulder to shoulder, joining together in serving others and reaching out to others. The couple that is tempted to remain shoulder to shoulder must frequently turn face to face for constructive and intentional conversation and personal times of intimacy.


The Danger: If either of the above postures are neglected, we can ultimately grow to a back to back posture. In this posture, we are either indifferently living separate lives or intentionally choosing separation rather than restoration.

By the time we end up back to back, much of our motivation for restoration is lost and we arrive at a place of cold hopelessness.

• Which posture is your marriage most tempted toward? Do you tend to linger face to face? …shoulder to shoulder? …back to back?

• What other couple can be brought into your lives to help stretch you to other postures?

By taking on a posture of prayer, the active postures in our lives can be kept in balance. It is God’s desire for a marriage to be face to face AND shoulder to shoulder. As His will is kept in our vision at all times, we will be able, according to His grace, to avoid the danger, enjoy the blessing, and bring His name glory.