My wife knows more of my passwords than I do. She has access to my phone, email, and calendar. Donna and I started sharing these things with each other years ago. Some married couples are too private with their personal things and only share after something goes wrong. Being transparent with your spouse is absolutely necessary to keep the enemy of your marriage at bay.
Thirty-six years of marriage will teach you this: integrity is a structure you build before you need it, not a mechanism you show up with on a hard day. Almost nobody wakes up one morning and decides to destroy their marriage. It usually starts small, in a door left open that should have stayed shut, a conversation nobody thought needed a witness, a habit of privacy nobody thought to question, and the list goes on.
Paul put it plainly in 1 Corinthians 10:12, "Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." He was not writing to people who already knew they were falling. He was writing to people who felt steady. Confidence, left unguarded, is exactly where a marriage becomes vulnerable.
I’ve counseled numerous couples and witnessed the destruction of enough relationships shattered by infidelity to realize that almost none of them began with someone deliberately betraying their spouse. Instead, they often started with something small at some point—a private text, a questionable conversation, a secret meeting, or something similar.
Donna and I put three specific guardrails in place years ago, and we still practice all three today.
My wife has my passwords. She can use them any time she wants too. Nothing in our lives is hidden from each other. If someone makes a pass at either of us or we feel we’ve been coerced into a compromising situation, we immediately contact each other and inform the other of the situation. We trust each other and are not willing to let the enemy gain a foothold with that trust. Secrecy is the soil temptation grows in, and taking the soil away takes a great deal of the danger with it.
I’m never alone in a closed room with a woman who isn’t my wife, daughter, or granddaughter. This doesn’t reflect on anyone’s character, including mine, but rather on my decision to make that choice beforehand, so I don’t have to face it in the heat of the moment. It also doesn’t mean I don’t trust other women; it’s just as much about protecting them as it is about protecting myself. The enemy loves to spread lies and cause trouble, so we’re determined to keep him out of this space. ( I think the same should apply with the wife and other men)
My staff and my family can walk into any meeting I am in, any time, without knocking and without an explanation. A closed door with nobody able to interrupt is where secrecy gets comfortable. An open one keeps everybody honest.
Donna trusts me, and I trust myself, but trust was never really the reason we built any of this.
The point of a guardrail is never the guardrail itself. It is what the guardrail protects. In our case, that is the actual presence we owe each other, the kind I have written about before, where being in the room and being present are not automatically the same thing. You cannot be fully present with your spouse while part of your life stays hidden from them. Secrecy and presence do not share the same space very well.
The same principle holds for anyone in a position of leadership or trust, not just marriage. I have written before about leading people instead of owning them, and the posture is the same here. An open door protects the people you lead just as much as it protects the people you love at home.
You cannot decide to be trustworthy in the middle of a temptation you never saw coming. Decide now, while nothing is wrong, what you will and will not keep hidden. Give your spouse your passwords. Keep your door open. Let the people around you interrupt you.
A guardrail is not proof that your marriage is weak. It is proof you take it seriously enough to protect it on purpose, instead of hoping for the best after the storm hits.
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