Relationships In A Marriage

When a person believes in Jesus as his Lord and Savior and receives Him into his heart, the Holy Spirit comes and indwells him and with the Lord's presence, he becomes a blessings magnet. Now, imagine what it is like when two believers come together in a marriage and form a family unit - that relationship is doubly blessed since Christ is now not only present in each believer's life but, being united, He become the third cord in that family unit and soon that relationship will begin to flourish.

Ecclesiastes 4:12 tells us, "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken".

So a marriage that is centered around Christ (the third person in the marriage) will be strong (see picture on the left - Three-strand Cord) as each strand twines around the other two and hence strengthens each other.

However, looking at the second picture  (see picture on the right - Four-strand Cord), one can easily observe that alternate strands will not touch each other (the two black strands do not touch each other; similarly, the two brown strands never get to meet each other).
When a party outside of the marriage relationship enters into the fray, one of the two will become intertwined and 'break away' from the family unit and soon the entire marriage will be weakened.

When a new person is added into the family nucleus, the marriage relationship has to be worked on with double vigor, else the distraction will impact the tenacity of the marriage.

More strands do not automatically mean a stronger cord; unless conscious effort is put in to avoid crowding, the entire rope will be weakened and the cord will have to be discarded or rewoven. This conscious relationship building applies also to members of the family - children can occupy the place once held so lovingly by the spouses and if nothing is done to correct this, precious marriages can start to crumble and disintegrate.

The Lord commands the couple in Ephesians 5: 21-28

²¹  Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
²⁶  to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
Marriage has to be worked at but not with human strength for that too can fail. Only with the strength that our Lord gives us when we look to Him can we succeed.