How Does Satan Attack Marriages?

Question 08098

Understanding how the enemy attacks marriages begins with understanding why he bothers. Marriage was God’s idea before sin entered the world, and Paul tells us it pictures something enormous: the relationship between Jesus and his church. Anything that displays the gospel that clearly is going to draw fire.

My wife and I have been married for a long time now, and I have sat with a great many couples over the years in various stages of trouble. What strikes me is how rarely the damage comes from a single dramatic blow, and how often it comes from a slow accumulation of small things nobody thought worth mentioning.

The First Marriage Was the First Target

Look at Genesis 3 with this question in mind and the pattern is unmistakable. The serpent approaches the woman while the man is with her. He does not attack the marriage directly; he attacks their shared confidence in God’s word, and the marriage fractures as a result. It is worth asking why he attacks marriages by that route rather than head on, and the answer is that he has never needed to do more than get us to doubt God.

Watch what happens once the fruit is eaten. They hide from God, then from each other behind fig leaves, and when God asks Adam what he has done, Adam says, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” In one sentence he blames his wife and, by implication, God for giving her to him. That is the oldest move in the book, and it is still the first thing that happens when a marriage comes under pressure.

So when we ask how Satan attacks marriages, Genesis gives us the template. Undermine confidence in what God has said, and the relationship that was built on it starts to come apart on its own.

Paul Warns a Church About It Directly

There is one passage where the New Testament makes the connection explicit. Writing about physical intimacy between husband and wife, Paul says they should not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, “so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self control” (1 Corinthians 7:5).

Notice what Paul assumes there. He assumes the enemy watches for openings in a marriage and moves into them. He assumes that distance between a husband and wife is an opportunity. And he speaks about it plainly, in a letter to be read aloud in church, without a trace of embarrassment.

Peter adds another angle when he tells husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way, “so that your prayers may not be hindered.” A marriage in a bad state has spiritual consequences that reach beyond the two people in it. If the enemy attacks marriages, he is also attacking the prayer life of both partners.

Why He Attacks Marriages So Persistently

Paul lifts the lid on this in Ephesians 5, where he quotes Genesis about a man leaving his father and mother and holding fast to his wife, and then adds, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Every marriage is a small, imperfect, living picture of the gospel.

That is why he attacks marriages rather than, say, friendships, which matter enormously but do not carry the same freight. A broken marriage in a congregation preaches a sermon nobody intended, and it preaches it to watching children, watching neighbours and watching unbelievers. The enemy is a strategist, and he has always gone after the things that display God most clearly.

It also explains why marriages so often come under sudden pressure at the very moment a couple takes a step of obedience. I have lost count of the number of times a husband and wife have told me that the worst fortnight of their marriage in years happened just after they offered themselves for some new service in the church. I would not want to make a rule of it. I would simply say I have stopped being surprised.

The Lines Along Which He Works

In my experience the enemy rarely bothers with anything exotic. He works along the fault lines that are already there. Unforgiveness is the largest of them. Paul told the Corinthians to forgive a repentant man so that they would not be outwitted by Satan, since we are not ignorant of his designs. Held grudges are precisely the ground he wants.

Secrecy is another. Whatever is hidden grows, and marriages are damaged far more by concealment than by the things concealed. Money kept quiet, messages deleted, a friendship that has become something else, a resentment carried for years and never spoken. The way he attacks marriages is by making the truth feel unspeakable.

And then there is simple neglect. Nobody sets out to drift. Work expands, children arrive or do not, church responsibilities multiply, and one day two people who once talked for hours have nothing left to say beyond logistics. That is not a scandal and nobody would call it sin, which is exactly what makes it effective. He attacks marriages far more often through the diary than through the bedroom.

Where the Culture Does His Work for Him

A great deal of the pressure on marriages now comes not from personal assault but from the assumptions we all breathe in. The idea that love is a feeling that arrives and departs of its own accord. The idea that a covenant should be honoured only as long as it is fulfilling. The endless comparison that a screen makes possible.

Pornography deserves particular mention because it has done more quiet damage in the churches I know than almost anything else. It trains the mind to treat people as products, it thrives entirely on secrecy, and it is available in unlimited quantity to anyone with a phone. If I were designing a way to attack marriages at scale, I could not improve on it.

None of this removes responsibility from us, and I would not want anyone reading this to think the devil is to blame for their choices. The culture supplies the atmosphere; the decision is still ours. I have written about that division in my answer on what role Satan plays in sin.

What Actually Protects a Marriage

The defences are unglamorous and they work. Confession that happens quickly, before the thing has time to set. Praying together, which is awkward for many couples and worth pushing through, because it is very difficult to stay bitter with someone while you are both talking to God about your children or your church or your worries.

Ordinary time together also matters more than most couples believe. Not romance in the greeting card sense, but the accumulated hours of shared life that make a marriage difficult to prise apart. The enemy attacks marriages through the gaps, and time closes gaps.

Then there is the willingness to let other people in. A couple who have one or two mature Christian friends who know the truth about them are far harder to isolate. Almost every serious marital collapse I have witnessed happened in the dark, after a long period in which nobody was told anything. Light is not a technique. It is simply the condition under which most of these problems shrink.

A Word If You Are in the Middle of It

If your marriage is in real trouble as you read this, I am not going to pretend that naming the enemy fixes anything. It does not. But it may change how you see the person across the table from you, and that can be the beginning of something.

Your husband or your wife is not the opposition. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. Whatever has gone wrong, and however much of it is genuinely their fault, the moment you start treating them as the enemy you have accepted a version of the situation that the actual enemy wrote.

So, now what?

Deal with the thing you have not told anyone. That is nearly always where the work begins, and nearly always the thing we most want to avoid. Tell God first, then tell your spouse if it concerns them, then tell a trusted believer if you need help carrying it.

And take the long view. A marriage is not defended by grand gestures but by ten thousand small acts of honesty, kindness and attention. The enemy attacks marriages patiently, over decades, and he is defeated the same way.

When did you last pray with your husband or wife about something that actually mattered to both of you? If the honest answer is that you cannot remember, that is not a reason for guilt. It is simply somewhere to start this evening.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:24 (ESV)