Marriage Mastery Foundations – Week 1 (sneak peak)

Welcome to week 1!

We’re going to kick this off with what may be the single most important shift I see in marriages that go from struggling to thriving: Learning to assume love first.

Before we dive in, just a quick note that this course works best when both the husband and wife are in it together. If your spouse isn’t here yet – please consider inviting them. Tell them what we’re learning about, let them know it’s a safe space where the goal is to build your marriage up to be thriving.

Here’s a link you can share with them to get them in the group: [sorry – you need to join to get this link]

This week’s lesson is focus on changing the lens through which you see your spouse’s actions and words. It’s not about pretending problems don’t exist, but rather starting with the assumption that they love you rather than are trying to hurt you in some way. Sort of a “innocent until proven guilty” approach to love. If the lens you look through is to assume love first, then you will see their mistakes as human, their rough edges as opportunities for grace, and their missteps as misunderstandings, not as proof of betrayal or malice.

The Core Idea

With each interaction, start with the belief that your spouse loves you, even when their words or actions sting.

Why does this matter? Because your assumptions shape your perceptions, and your perceptions lead to reactions. If your assumption is that they love you, you will look for ways to prove that assumption because all humans operate under confirmation bias. Our brains look to confirm what we already know to be true.

So, if you start with a base assumption of love, you will interpret your spouse’s sometimes clumsy attempts graciously and recognize them as a bid for connection. If you start with a base assumption of malice, apathy, with a posture of resentment or contempt, then you will interpret those same words as an attack and automatically take a defensive posture and gear up for a fight.

1 Corinthians 13:7 – “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

When you assume love first, your marriage atmosphere changes from a combat zone to that of a team working towards each other’s good.

Why this matters

First, it lowers defensiveness – if you believe your spouse loves you, you don’t need to armour up every time they speak. You can listen to understand and connect, rather than listening for an opening to strike.

Second, it shifts the narrative – Instead of “They don’t care about me”, the story becomes “They love me, even if they said it badly”. The first builds resentment over time, then contempt, which is a death-sentence for a marriage if it continues too long. The second builds trust and intimacy which leads to vulnerability, which marriages need to thrive.

Third, it creates safety – A home filled with trust and an assumption of love feels very different than one filled with suspicion. You can’t be known by your spouse if every time you consider sharing something, you worry it will be taken the wrong way. Your relationship will stay shallow, you won’t tackle the deep issues, and certainly won’t learn to resolve conflicts if you assume the other is in the fight just to beat you down.

An Anecdote: The Forgotten Text

Imagine a wife texting her husband in the middle of a stressful day: “Can you grab milk on the way home?” Hours later, he walked in empty-handed. She snapped, “You never listen to me!” He bristled: “I had ten things on my mind, I cannot remember everything!”

The truth? He had read the message while walking into an important meeting and planned to stop at the store afterwards on the way home, but the meeting ran late, and in the rush to get home on time for dinner, he forgot the milk.

Her assumption was that he just didn’t care, and that’s why he didn’t do it. His assumption was that her anger must mean she doesn’t appreciate his attempt to get home on time for dinner to be with his family.

Together, these assumptions mean his homecoming, which should be a happy event, instead turned into a battlefield.

Now imagine if she had paused and thought, “He loves me. If he missed the milk, it was probably just a mistake.” She might have said with a sigh but a smile, “Looks like we are improvising dinner tonight. Thanks for getting home quickly.”

Or perhaps even if she didn’t catch herself, if he responded in love thinking, “She must be having a hard day,” apologized for forgetting the milk and offered to run out to grab some.

Either way, they likely would have had a radically different night.

Practical Steps for the Week

When tension rises, pause and ask yourself:

What assumption am I making about my spouse’s intent right now?
If I assume they love me, how would that change my response?

This takes practice, and it’s hard to change old habits of assuming the worst, but if you start today, before too long, you will find that daily friction becomes opportunities for grace. Conflicts begin to be a source of intimacy rather than separation.

If you really want to hit the ground running – ask your spouse to remind you when you’re making assumptions with a promise you will not retaliate.

An illustration

Think of this week as cleaning your lens. If your glasses are dirty, every view looks distorted. When the lens you view your spouse with is scratched, every word your spouse speak feels harsher than it is.

But when you clean the lens, or replace it with a better one with the reminder of “My spouse loves me”, everything looks clearer. That doesn’t erase problems, but it makes them solvable because you’re tackling them as teammates, not as enemies.

Reflection Questions (personal)

When was the last time you doubted your spouse’s love? What triggered it?
What would have been different if you had assumed love first?
How can you remind yourself daily that your spouse is for you, not against you?

Couple’s Exercise

Set aside 10 to 15 minutes this week and try this together:

Each of you think of a recent moment where you felt misunderstood or hurt.
Share the situation briefly with each other – the one who is listening shouldn’t interrupt, counter, argue, or do anything except ask questions to understand.
Then answer this question out loud: “If I assume you love me, how could I interpret what happened?”
Give the other spouse an opportunity to share anything that helps affirm an assume-love approach. Or, if they were just having a really bad moment – they can admit they maybe weren’t acting very lovingly and ask for forgiveness.
Switch roles and repeat.

Forum Discussion Prompt

What is one strategy or habit that helps you remember your spouse loves you, especially in tense moments?

You can post the discussion right in this thread. Your response may encourage someone else, so do not be shy about sharing!

Want next week’s lesson? Click here.