Are you suffering from confusing relationship issues that can’t be solved with prayer? Don’t worry about a thing: The Gospel Coalition has the answers you’re looking for! Just read these insightful tips to ensure your marriage is a successful testament to the power of Christ, and not your own personal desires!

1. It’s not bad to want to have sex with your significant other. It’d be another sort of worry if you didn’t. The key is to want to glorify Christ more than you want to have sex with each other.

See, your first mistake was assuming your relationship is about you! It isn’t. It’s about a dead Jewish guy.

2. The key to glorifying Christ more than you want to have sex with each other is that it is a decision to be made over and over again.

Translation: bringing a deified virgin into the mix should prevent those lusty thoughts.

3. Persons in a dating or courting relationship are on their best behavior. So however they are now, you can expect, over time, for them to get “worse.” As familiarity grows, people let their guards down. Marriage does not fix bad behavior; it often gives it freer reign. Ladies, this means if your boyfriend is controlling, suspicious, verbally condescending or manipulative, he will get worse, not better the longer your relationship goes on. Whatever you are making excuses for or overlooking now, will get harder to ignore and more prominent the longer your relationship goes on. You can’t fix him, and marriage won’t straighten him out.

Hey, that’s actually good advice right there. Good thing it has nothing to do with religion! Except for this sounds rather sexist. Is it always the dude who needs to be straightened out?

4. Nearly every Christian I know who is married to an unbeliever loves their spouse and does not necessarily regret marrying them, but has experienced deep pain and discontent in their marriage because of this unequal yoking and would now never advise a believer to marry an unbeliever.

That’s cool, I usually tell my readers they should avoid marrying people who have not come to their senses.

5. Assuming you’re special and you’re different and their experiences won’t reflect yours is shortsighted, unwise, and arrogant. The people who love you and are warning/advising you against your relationship might be ignorant fools. Those sorts of people do exist. But odds are better that your parents, your pastor, your older married friends are wiser than you think.

This is pretty strange advice. It seems to suggest the best people to judge your relationship are other people. I assume a sexless priest came up with that brilliant notion.

6. Living together before marriage is a marriage killer.

If it can’t work because living together first was hard, why do couples think not living together first will somehow solve the problem?

7. Premarital sex de-incentivizes a young man to grow up, take responsibility, and lead his home and family.

You know what de-incentivizes me? Having cobwebs on my dick until I can pay for a wedding ceremony, that’s what. And what the hell does ‘lead his family’ mean? Are we building a house together or something?

8. Pre-marital sex wounds a young woman’s heart, perhaps imperceptibly at first but undeniably over time, as she trades in covenant benefits without covenant security. This is not the way God designed sex to fulfill us. Never give your body to a man who has not pledged to God his faithfulness to you in covenant marriage, which presupposes an accountability to a local church. In short, don’t give your heart to a man who is not accountable to anybody who provides godly discipline.

Well, occasionally something soft and pink will get damaged a little, but that’s nothing a little rest and relaxation can’t heal. As for this notion that God has a profound interest in who you’re fucking, it sounds more like the earthly concern of celibate dudes trying to tell everyone else how to live.

9. All of your relationships, including your romantic relationship, is meant to make Jesus look big more than it is meant to provide you personal fulfillment. When we make personal fulfillment our ultimate priority in our relationships, ironically enough, we find ourselves frustratingly unfulfilled.

You hear that? If your relationship doesn’t make JC look like the ‘Big Dog’, then you’re doing it wrong. Don’t you know you’re an insignificant ant compared to his largeness? Isn’t it ironic that when you don’t give your whole relationship to your imaginary friend, you feel unfulfilled? Oh wait, that’s not actually ironic. It’s just sad, really.

10. You are loved by God with abundant grace in Christ’s atoning work, and an embrace of this love by faith in Jesus provides Holy Spiritual power and satisfaction to pursue relationships that honor God and thereby maximize your joy.

I seriously doubt that the same people who are always forcing you to keep it in your pants are actually worried about maximizing your joy. More likely, they want to maximize your tithing, so they can continue to make sure that no one has a satisfying sex life, least of all you.

Still having issues with your significant other? How is that even possible with such life altering advice? It must be you. You’re the problem, sinner.