Events of today, too tedious to mention, prompted this advice.  I am a follower of Jesus Christ. That singular fact shapes my perspective about life, the universe, and everything.  (Douglas Adams, check him out.)

The bottom line of this advice:  be careful who you marry.  Trite, but true.  There are several very good reasons to be careful who you marry, but one in particular prompts this missive.  I speak specifically to my friends who are also on this journey of faith.

Our journeys are as individual as we are.  My path to Jesus is not the same as yours, or anyone else's for that matter.  If I'm walking my path singly, only I am affected by my particular trials and tribulations, designed to work out faith in me.  (Peripheral effect aside.)  If, however, I am married, my spouse is directly affected by the trials and tribulations I need to become perfected in faith - whether he needs those same trials or not.  By the same token, I am directly affected by the trials and tribulations he needs to become perfected in faith - whether I need those same trials or not.  When we married, we effectively signed onto our partner's path, the good and the difficult parts.  

So now we leave the spiritual, and get to the practical.  For my single friends, get to know the person you're interested in well enough to know both their strengths and their weaknesses.  Take an honest look at those weaknesses, knowing that God will become their refiner's fire and burn away their impurities, just as He does yours.  If you link your life to theirs, you join them in that refiner's fire, and they join you in yours.  

For my married friends, going through someone else's refining is hard on the best of days.  You already know this.  I've observed, and it is certainly true in my own marriage, that God brings together two completely different, broken, incomplete people, and refines us together to make a complete whole.  It is painful.  It isn't 'fair', a weather term in my world.  I encourage you to use your spouse's refining to strengthen your own faith, and use your strength to build them up during the refining.  Anger or blame toward your spouse may well indicate that particular refiner's fire is not meant solely for them.

Conflict

From time to time, I give advice.  Good advice, I think.  You be the judge.  

When a conflict arises, and you behave toward your opponent the way you've always behaved, they will respond the way they have always responded. It is a safe, familiar path. If you want a different response from them, you have to behave differently. Change your script! That may mean a concerted effort to tone down your emotional behavior toward them, no matter how emotional the topic. Or it may mean allowing them to see your emotions, if you keep a tight hold on emotion. You won't see change in someone else's response until you change your behavior. You may not see change in them after you change your behavior. You will, however, have broken the cycle. That is the first step to a real difference.