I was reading this blog about Russell Wilson’s Divorce this morning, when this quote jumped out at me:

Satan will do everything he can to push you too close to your significant other. He wants you to make sexual mistakes and leaps of intimacy that God designed for marriage. But when you are married? Satan flips the switch. He wants to do everything in his power to pull those two people away from each other, and from God’s design.

In my youth and young adult ministry, I witnessed that magnetizing draw of intimacy. How powerful that pull can be before the convenant of marriage. And having done ministry with couples all over the maps of their marriages…the one common theme seems to be that all marriages (even those we point to as the most passionate) become frayed at some point desperately clinging onto something as they get pulled apart: whether 2 years, 11 years, 24 years; weekly or even daily.

This quote captures so well what I have struggled to articulate, something changes on people’s wedding days. It is far more than signing a piece of paper and making the legal agreement to be with someone else.

Its as if the poles reverse.

The magnetizing intimacy that folks tried to avoid while single, or at least temper (if only momentarily)–becomes a strong force that is gnawing at and trying to yank the couple apart.

Intimacy turns into Apathy

And if you are not ready for this great reversal then it is going to knock you off your feet. You had spent so much of your relationship fighting off one direction, that it is strange when it smacks you from the other direction. And then you have to learn how to fight this new pulling sensation.

“Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Mark 10:9

Rather than only trying to keep singles hands off each other, Mark 10:9 needs to become our lookout call to couples to cling tight cause Satan’s gonna start pulling you apart now.