What Role Should Preferences Play in Selecting a Spouse?

It is common in our day and age, in which we have so many choices, to be paralyzed by a fear of making the wrong choice. I mean even the Iphone now comes in several different (not just two) color options. Marketers have made it their aim to appeal to as many different tastes as possible. Such is the status of modern consumerism.

It should not be surprising that in this culture we also find our preferences and tastes coming into play in the area of dating and finding a spouse. This is the cultural air we breath and so it seems normal.

God has designed us with personality and desires and these are often shaped the culture we are in. Preferences are not inherently bad or sinful (though they can be if they are unbiblical). But, I would say that the tendency in our culture is to elevate our preferences to dangerous heights and this often causes us to overlook potential godly mates.  

Recently I read a blog post by Tripp Lee on why he married a white woman (he is black). And I found him to be quite helpful. Below is an excerpt on this issue of preferences:

Jessica didn’t look like I expected my future wife to look, but honestly that didn’t matter to me. Don’t get me wrong, I thought she was beautiful from the first time I met her. And I was never opposed to marrying a white girl. I just didn’t think I would. But as I grew in my faith and my heart changed, my preferences started changing too. My main preference was that my wife be godly, and Jessica was. So I wifed her.

Never for a moment did I feel like I was settling. It feels more like settling to overlook a godly woman merely because of her ethnicity. I never wanted to value my preferences for a wife over what I needed in a wife.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with having preferences, but we have to hold them with an open hand. I know some people who overlook a potential godly spouse because they don’t fit some random preference. Some of our preferences really don’t matter that much. Some of our preferences may even be foolish, so we have to submit all of them to Scripture....

It’s OK to want things in a spouse, but we have to submit our desires to what God wants for us in a spouse. What I wanted and needed most was a godly partner, and that’s exactly what God provided.