Episode 63: Who Comes First – My Child or My Spouse?

We have touched on parenting issues such as bonding with our children, sexuality education, managing social media and understanding contemporary topics such as gender theory, among others.

We now want to dedicate a mini-series on how we can grow in our love as a married couple. Why? Because while the greatest gift we can give our children is the gift of faith, the cultivation of a personal relationship with Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, the second biggest gift we can give to our children is – to love our spouse, their other parent, as best as we can.

Unfortunately, through our interaction with other couples, we realise that many parents tend to prioritise their children over their own spouse instead, often to the detriment of their own relationship as a married couple. This is getting the order of priorities somewhat inverted, much like putting the cart before the horse.

Why do we say this?

As Pope St John Paul II said, “According to the plan of God, marriage is the foundation of the wider community of the family, since the very institution of marriage and conjugal love are ordained to the procreation and education of children.” (Familiaris Consortio, n. 14)

Pope Francis too, noted that the love between a married couple “is the first and most elementary realisation of the communion of love that is the Trinity”. He stressed, therefore, that while married couples “should stand before each other as an ‘I’ and a ‘you’,” they should “stand before the rest of the world, including the children, as a ‘we.’” (General Audience, Wednesday, 23 October 2024)

He further noted that children suffer when there is a lack of unity between their parents.

Since our marriage is the foundation of our family, we need to become better lovers first so that we can become better parents. Not only that: the stronger our marriage, the more we love one another, the better we can give our children a stable, positive and nurturing environment to flourish in. In other words, stronger marriage, stronger family, happier children.

Recently, I came across a very interesting analogy offered by Dr Christopher West. He said that if the family is the basic cell of society, which it is, then marriage is the nucleus of that cell. That made a lot of sense to me. After all, the nucleus contains the codes for the proper functioning of the cell. It transmits messages to the rest of the cell, and directs the activities within it. If the nucleus is not functioning well, the cell will not function well, and will ultimately die.

So our priority has to be clear. God first. Once we love God with all our heart, our mind, our soul, He will touch us and order our hearts to love our neighbour as they should be loved. And who is our closest neighbour? Our spouse!

We are not suggesting for a moment that our children are not important. Quite the contrary. Because our children are so important, we want to love them even better, and that will more likely happen when we love God and our spouse well.

When we love our spouse well, we will be able to love our children even better. After that then comes friends and community. Get the order wrong, and our children, our family, will suffer.

In this new series, we are going to focus on how we can build a strong marriage with our spouse. We will begin at the next episode by discussing how we can speak our spouse’s love language, which is based on the 5 languages of love by Gary Chapman. I’m sure many of us want to love our spouse, yet I suspect many of us, if you’re like me, at least initially, don’t seem to understand or speak the love language that our spouse identifies more strongly with. And how that can lead to misunderstandings and arguments.

Following that, we will share the ABCs of loving our spouse. One attribute for each episode:

A for affirming our spouse
B for being there for our spouse
C for communicating effectively with our spouse
D for disciplining our children together with our spouse
E for empathy
F for forgiveness, and finally
G for God being at the centre of our marriage.

Caveat: we are sharing this not because we are great spouses or have been flawless in our marriage. Quite the opposite. We have suffered and hurt each other much in our many years of marriage so far, and have learned many painful lessons which we hope to share with you, so that you and your family can learn from our mistakes and have a greater marriage for the sake of your children as you continue to build the kingdom of God, first and foremost, in your family.