Is Personal Development Affecting Your Marriage?

As you read this title, you probably have many things going through your head. You may even think you know what I am about to say and how it affects your marriage in a good way, but you are actually wrong in my opinion. Let me explain what I mean.

First, a disclaimer: I 100% believe in personal development and have believed in it for many years. I have read countless books over the years, attended numerous conferences, and listened to many audios on personal development.

So, you may be asking, how does personal development affect my marriage negatively?

First, let’s talk about how it affects your marriage positively before tackling the elephant in the room. It helps each of you grow as a person, and the more you grow, the more you can give each other mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually.

Personal development can change your life from average to being on top of the mountain. Yes, it’s that powerful. I know business owners who will hire a mediocre-skilled worker with an above-average positive mental attitude over a professionally skilled worker with a negative attitude. As they say, the negative attitude person will spread that negativity throughout the business and destroy the environment for all the employees.

Now that it’s clear I support personal development, let’s get into why I felt the need to write this article.

I know couples who do a ton of personal development but not a lot of marriage development. Yes, maybe you can call marriage development a form of personal development, but I see it as different.

What does personal development teach you? It teaches you how to be happy alone, right? It shows you how to find that inner spirit within you. It helps you grow as an individual. It teaches you how to look out for yourself!

What does marriage development teach you? It teaches you how to live under the same roof with communication. It teaches you how to turn “I” into “WE”. It teaches you how to look out for both of you together, not just yourself. It covers everything from handling differences to fighting fair in conversations with each other.

In a nutshell, “Personal development teaches you how to be happy alone, while marriage development teaches you how to be happy together.”

Do you see the problem yet? The more you build your personal development, the more you learn to live without your spouse, and vice versa. So, the more you focus solely on personal development in your marriage, the further you may grow apart from your spouse without realizing it until it’s too late.

Many times, years down the road, couples say they just grew apart. I believe that sometimes they grow apart because they never really gave their marriage a chance to grow closer together! They lived individual lives and thought they were happy until they weren’t. By that point, they had lived so much of their lives without each other, even though they were married, that they felt there was no growing back together.

So, what’s the solution, you may ask? I’m glad you asked! I have a solution, especially after being involved in personal and marriage development for years.

It’s simple: if you put an hour a day into personal development, then put an hour a day into marriage development. If you only have an hour, then split it—30 minutes for each.

If you balance it out, you’ll still grow as a person while also growing your marriage.

Remember, there will be seasons where you might be 80% one way and 20% the other. For instance, if you’re in a rough patch in your marriage, you might focus mostly on marriage development. If you’re advancing in your career, you might focus mostly on personal development during that season.

Just remember, don’t let those seasons last too long because you want this to be pretty balanced for the benefit of your marriage. You want to blossom together. You want to grow in such a way that, when you look back at your marriage in 10 or 20 years, you can say, “Wow, I would do it all over again if I could!”

If you start this process, I promise your marriage will grow. BUT, and this is a big but, it takes two of you. You can’t do marriage development by yourself. Yes, maybe you start because your spouse says they are not into all that, but to make this work the way it needs to, it takes both of you growing together through marriage development.

I pray that you don’t take this lightly because it can have one of the greatest impacts on your marriage if done right with the right intention between you and your spouse!

Bio
Latest Posts

Chris Benton

I am co-founder of Inspired Marriage. I went through 19 years of addictions until God healed me Dec 26th, 2007. The first 5 years of our marriage was hell because of my addictions. With Sandy's patience, I was able to allow God to work in me and we have been growing spiritually together ever since! Oct 5th, 2023 was 21 years of marriage and it's been an inspired one!