Kindness
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”
George Eliot
Think of one thing you can do for your spouse today to make his/her life easier. Do it without expectations, do it just to be kind and loving and giving. If you do this everyday, what kind of marriage might you have?
What makes marriage work? Part 2
Here is part 2 in the series of what makes marriage work. My goal is to dish out tidbits of information that will help you improve your marriage.
This post will focus on conflict resolution. Conflict. It can be a scarey word to a lot of people but the avoidance of conflict will result in killing the passion in your relationship. When two human beings come together and allow themselves to be their authentic selves, there is going to be friction. To try to avoid this results in walking on eggshells and not being able to share genuine feelings, thoughts, beliefs and ideas for fear you are going to rock the boat.
Rock the boat! If communcation is dealt with inside the boundaries of love, respect, kindness, and empathy, conflict can lead to deeper understanding of one another which leads to a deeper level of intimacy. But it means allowing each other to be who you are and not trying to change each other. It means respecting one another’s views, feelings, and opinions. It means allowing your partner to feel what they feel and express emotions in a genuine way.
Embrace healthy conflict and have a happy New Year!
What Makes Marriage Work?
I am going to make this blog more of a series of posts because this is the elusive question with many answers. I will start by saying I will answer this question based on my own marriage and the marriages I see day in and day out in my practice.
Acceptance is a big one, so I will spend this post discussing the importance of accepting one another in marriage. When you first get together, the romance is flourishing and you are both putting your best foot forward. The newness of the relationship can cause us to put blinders on. As the relationship progresses and you continue to open up to, live with, and become intertwined with your partner, it is impossible to avoid seeing the flaws that were really there all along. We open the window of ourselves to our intimate partners. Then we do something crazy, now that we are in, we begin to pick each other apart and put a microscope on those flaws.
Imagine you allowed a visitor into your home, and once inside, they begin to tell you all the things that are wrong with it. You missed a spot painting over here on this wall. Oh, the carpet has a spot on it over here. Those pictures are hung all wrong! We would surely not invite them back! But yet we do this to our intimate partners once we are let into their worlds.
You nor your partner are perfect. You never will be. If you can accept that in one another, and focus on noticing and pointing out what you admire and love about your partner and let the other stuff go, you bring peace to your home.
Try for one full day to not complain at your partner. Can you do it? Can you go a whole day without complaining about something your partner has said or done? Now if you can continue to repeat that behavior, your will be on your way to making your marriage work. More to come…..