What is the secret to a happy marriage? The secret of how to have a happy marriage is realizing that happiness is not the purpose of marriage. If your goal in marriage is your own personal happiness, you’re going about it all wrong.
The first thing to do is to spend some time studying the definition of marriage according to the Word of God. The verse in the image below will help you to gain a Biblical perspective on marriage. Take the time to become a student of marriage. You probably spent months training for your job or years studying in college for your profession, but how much time have you dedicated to learning about the vocation of marriage that you’ve been called to for the rest of your life?
Catholic-Link offers several great resources to help you grow in your understanding of marriage as God intends it to be. We also recommend the BELOVED series from Augustine Institute. The video below is a clip from this incredible DVD series that will motivate you to seek holiness over happiness in your marriage. Three to Get Married (the excellent bookby Archbp. Fulton J. Sheen), Just Married: The Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the Frist Five Years of Marriage, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church are other great options to guide you.
What is Marriage?
Remember, The Purpose of Marriage is Not Happiness
What Does the Bible Say About How to Have a Happy Marriage?
What Does the Catechism Say About How to Have a Happy Marriage?
The love of the spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity and indissolubility of the spouses’ community of persons, which embraces their entire life: “so they are no longer two, but one flesh.”153 They “are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total mutual self-giving.”154 This human communion is confirmed, purified, and completed by communion in Jesus Christ, given through the sacrament of Matrimony. It is deepened by lives of the common faith and by the Eucharist received together. – CCC 1644
The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love, has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. By its very nature it is ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children. Christ the Lord raised marriage between the baptized to the dignity of a sacrament (cf. CIC, can. 1055 § 1; cf. GS 48 § 1). – CCC 1660
The Saints’ Advice for a Happy Marriage
“The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for what He is sending us every day in His goodness.” – St. Gianna“The purpose of marriage is to help married people sanctify themselves and others. For this reason, they receive a special grace in the sacrament which Jesus Christ instituted. Those who are called to the married state will, with the grace of God, find within their state everything they need to be holy, to identify themselves each day more with Jesus Christ, and to lead those with whom they live to God.”– St.Josemaria Escriva“[On what young husbands should say to their wives:] I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us… I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.” ― John Chrysostom
Growing Closer to God is the Answer
