My belief about the marriage and the Bible

Since I've become engaged, I've been thinking a lot about marriage and my future role as a wife. Growing up in a Jehovah Witness household, I was taught that in a marriage, a woman was accountable to her husband and her husband was accountable to God.

What's so interesting about these thoughts, is that I thought they were antiquated and sexist. But is it really? I mean, are we suppose to play certain roles in our marriages and relationships in order for them to work? And when those ingredients are not in place, is it then that we allow "sin" into our marriages? And when those marriages fall apart (for whatever reasons), and we're back to being single, do we ever look back and think that those old sexist thoughts weren't so wrong after all?

With the extremely high number of divorces and malcontent in our relationships, maybe there's something to it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some religious conservative, but I do believe that the bible hold some truths that deserves a second look.

I ran across this article on FB, which talks about the Impact of Sin on marriage:

God intended marriage to be a place where two people were exposed before Him and each... other. Not just physically exposed, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, too. His plan was for marriage to be a place for complete sharing and intimacy.

But a lack of purity—sin—can prevent a marriage from being what God has planned for it. Sin is what caused Adam and Eve to become "unnaked" (to coin a word).

When the two of them ate the fruit, their relationship changed immediately. They lost their innocence. Their comfortable, total nakedness gave way to shame and fear. Their first step was to cover themselves with fig leaves
In the beginning, their most sensitive areas could be exposed without fear. (Genitals are the most sensitive area of the body.) But sin keeps us from exposing the sensitive, delicate areas of our lives.

It is clear that sin is the greatest obstacle to openness between a husband and wife. ~ Jimmy Evans

Most of my friends who were married, are now divorced or in the process of getting divorce. And what is interesting, is that most of them decided to let other influences destroy the intimacy of their marriages.

Now, I'm not judging my friends (considering that I've never been marriage), but the constant reasons that I get from my them are: lack of communication, infidelity, feelings of wanting to make oneself happy, infidelity, feeling stifled, infidelity, simple immaturity, oh and infidelity.

It's a pretty grim message that I'm getting from my friends. In fact, I had one friend (whose in the process of getting divorced) tell me, "to make sure that I'm marrying my best friend....because the night before she got married, she was sure she wasn't marrying her best friend." Wow! Really?

I didn't have a response to this simply because I have no doubt that Joe is my best friend. I also feel lucky because I believe that we are walking in the same direction. Now I'm not naive or just blindly in love, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that our marriage is going to be a cake walk. We're going to have some very difficult obstacles to overcome.

I only pray that we will not allow "sin" to ruin the intimacy of our marriage and if it does (because we are human), then we find a way to save our marriage so that we can continue to walk in the same direction as husband and wife with God's blessing.