Yesterday, on Friday, my beautiful bride Diana and I celebrated our 39th anniversary. We met 41 years ago at university in Tennessee and working on our relationship ever since. I share the best times of my live with her, however, we had our difficulties as well like most couples.

Marriage and love are not a one-time event, but a lifelong process. Our anniversary made me think about the meaning of marriage. 1 Corinthians 11:11 (TLB) says: “In God’s plan, men and women need each other.”

It is interesting that even in the very beginning of the Bible, in the creation stories, the relationship of men and women is a central topic. Genesis 1:27 says: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

In the other creation story, beginning in Genesis 2:4, there is even a special twist to it. God creates Adam first. Why does God do that? Maybe it is for Adam’s benefit so he can experience and learn about love.

In Gen 1:18 (NIV) we read: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” Consequently God creates all the animals. Nonetheless, they cannot fill the void in Adam.

So God lets Adam fall into a deep sleep and creates the woman using a part of Adam’s own body (the Hebrew word translated here usually as “rib” is in all other 40 occurrences in the Bible translated as “side”).

Why does the Bible put it that way? I think it shows that we are just lonely and lost without the other gender, the other side, or as we sometimes call it: the better half.

Those stories, particular in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, are like parables. We can discover a lot of truth in them about us and the world around us. They try to explain why things are the way they are, even if it puzzles us at times, and they do it in a way, even a child or an uneducated peasant 5,000 years ago could understand.

It basically says: gender, sex and marriage were part of God’s plan for us. God created us to connect with each other, and marriage is God’s plan for the most close connection between a man and a woman.

As Rick Warren puts it in one of his sermons: “Marriage doesn’t solve your problems. Marriage does not create your problems. Marriage reveals your problems. It simply magnifies what was already a problem when you were living as a single adult. So if marriage doesn’t solve your problems, what does marriage do? Why did God design marriage in the first place? God created marriage for the connection of men and women.”

Nobody holds the full image of God in oneself. We need the other half. Marriage is the instrument for this connection. It is more than just a tradition, it is an archetype of human existence. In the connection of marriage we can find to ourselves, including recognizing our own issues, as Rick Warren says, and work on it with the help of the other half.

Such love requires to open up to the other, to become vulnerable. Marriage counsellors know, vulnerability is the oxygen that makes a relationship breathe.

Unfortunately, our culture often tries to teach us the opposite, not to make ourselves vulnerable but to harden and protect ourselves, and not to trust others while love is romantically distorted as a one-time event of falling in love with the one and only that magically makes us happy. That is not the biblical idea of love and it only leads to disappointment.

For marriage to really fulfill its purpose to help us to become whole, we need to build and improve our relationship with that special other person continuously. Marriage and love require effort and work. Only then can marriage last.

In its ideal marriage is supposed to last, to be permanent, though in reality we might miss this ideal. However, our failure does not make the ideal wrong.

Truth is, we need relationship and connection in many areas of our lives, not only in marriage, whether in the workplace, school, health system, clubs or sports. The connection between a man and a woman, especially in marriage is special.

It is a higher level of connection and it is healthy to keep it special and different from those other relationships. Jesus said: “‘God made them male and female’ from the beginning of creation. ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.” (Mark 10:6-9 NLT)

God even protected this connection with two of the Ten Commandments: You shall not commit adultery, and you should not covet your neighbour’s wife… It is about respecting this connection, respecting the trust, the love, the commitment our partner has for us or that another couple has for each other.

However, humans are far from perfect. Sometimes it just does not work out as well as planned, but it is still God’s plan for us to help us to become whole and also fulfill the very first commandment, God gave us: to multiply and fill the Earth (Genesis 1:28).

At the same time marriage is meant to help us learn more about love and commitment and practice on a very small scale what God’s greatest commandment says: love God with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul … and love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37 and 39).

Sometimes it is easier said than done. God’s commandments, as simple as they may be, are not easy to fulfill. In fact, if it wasn’t for God’s grace and forgiveness, we would be lost. Luckily, God is always willing to forgive when we cannot live up to his expectations. That is true for love as well, we all are a work in progress.

It might not work out in every case. Sometimes we may fall so out of love that we just have to admit that we failed and need to end a specific relationship. That can be very painful, especially when it is a one-sided breakup, or when a third person is involved.

Some of the biblical heroes had more than one woman at the same time, however, it always led to big conflict and a lot of trouble (Abraham with Sarah and Hagar, Jacob with Rachel and Lea, and their maids, King David with his many wives and Bathsheba …

However, whenever marriage and love succeed, when we are able to connect with our spouse, when we can learn to overcome some of our own issues and problems, it can be the happiest feeling of all.

Anniversaries can help us remember what marriage is about, and can challenge us to continue on this way, knowing that our spouse is in our care, that we can make their life better, that love is first about what we can give, and trust that in the process we will also receive and find ourselves in our partners care. The Apostle Paul reminds us: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35).

• Karsten Decker is an ordained Lutheran pastor and novelist from Germany who has lived and worked in Bermuda since 2001. At the moment he helps the Centenary Methodist Church at Collectors Hill as pulpit supply.