Many marriages are pining away because of a horrible disparity in the relationship. Each partner is looking to the other for fulfillment he can never give. For years each has been taught that there is only one person in the world and that finding the right person is the only guarantee of a happy marriage. Not realizing that being the right person is more important to lasting marital joy than finding the right person , mates naively set out to place an onerous burden upon the object of their love. Each looks at the other for fulfillment, happiness and an endless supply of emotional warm fuzzies.

It is patently unfair, however, to place upon your mate a responsibility that no human is capable of achieving. Love, joy, and peace are not the “fruit of the spouse” but the “fruit of the Spirit.” No human is capable of accomplishing what he was not designed to do.

Jim Binney, The Ministry of Marriage, (Greenville: BJU Press, 2003), 131.