The Greatest Threat to Marriage in 2023

Some things never change. When my grandparents were born 100 years ago, some basic elements of their parent's marriage was the same then as what we face today. Trust, respect, vulnerability, and a host of other issues do not change through the generations.

Yet as we begin 2023 there is one issue that is unique to the day and time in which we live. While generations past may have dealt with the issue, they did not face the obstacles which we now face.

The issue is attention.

Successful relationships require attention. They always have, and they always will. Yet what is unique for our day is not the importance of attention but the competition for our attention that our loved ones must face.

Never has there been a time in which so many organizations/companies were fixated on garnering your attention. "Watch time and only watch time" has been the focus of YouTube since 2011 (see The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher pg. 106). When social media companies learned that their profits were tied to the attention of everyone, society changed. Unknowingly, the state of our relationships changed.

Work, kids, and household demands have always competed for our attention. But none of those things had the resources or addictive nature as YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, and others. People have always wanted our attention but never had they so focused on getting and keeping our attention. While profits rose, attention on the relationships which mattered most waned. The result is struggling marriages and families.

This is what makes 2023 so unique. While love demands focus, we have a million different places where our attention could go. And, others benefit when we give our attention to something other than our spouse.

So for your marriage to flourish in 2023, the most important action is to pay attention to what you are paying attention to. And to intentionally ensure that your spouse will regularly have your attention while easily being able to gain your attention when they need it.

You will feel the effects but likely will not understand the source. Rarely do we recognize when we suffer from a lack of attention. If we did, we could easily communicate to our spouse that we need more connection. In that case, relationships would swiftly reconnect.

Instead, a lack of attention expresses itself in various ways: we fight over money, there is a sexual disconnection, communication suffers, we are more likely to misunderstand our spouse, there's an unspoken tension, we struggle with in-laws, etc. None of those things are easily identified as the byproduct of attention deficit. Yet that's exactly what they are.

The result is a type of double-whammy where a drought of attention is wreaking havoc in our relationships, but no one sees the real cause of the problems. So even if a couple tries to work on their issues, they rarely are confronting the actual problem.

Attention has always been an issue in marriage, but never has it been the most significant problem until today. The greatest threat to marriage in 2023 is a lack of attention.

That's the topic we will be covering this month in our premium newsletters: How do I regularly have my spouse's attention? How can I get my spouse's attention when I need it? What habits can we form to ensure we pay attention to one another?

Join us this month. With a small investment of time, you can greatly change your year.

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