Marriage is a Mirror
by
Mark Gungor on December 2nd, 2008
Ever
walk past a mirror and get shocked or mortified by
what you see? Your hair standing up in a
weird way, your slip showing, your fly open, egg
stuck in your teeth? Mirrors can be real
lifesavers. Had it not been for that mirror,
you may have gone the entire day looking
ridiculous.
Marriage is also a
mirror. By living so closely with another
human being, you start to get a picture of what
you really look like. You start to see where
you need to adjust and change. This is why
marriage is so effective at making people's lives
more rich and productive-if they adjust to the
needed changes.
Unfortunately, many
expect marriage to be something that makes them
look better, not something that reveals where they
don't look so good. Additionally, rather
than see where we need to change, we opt to
project our own negative images on our spouses and
point out where they need to change: She is
so irritating....he is such a lazy slob....I don't
want to act this way, but she brings out the worst
in me. In the Bible, Adam played the blame game
like this: "That woman you put here with
me-she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate
it."
If we believe our spouse
is present in the marriage to make us look better,
instead of being a mirror to help us see who we
really are, we will think our marriage is
inadequate whenever one of our faults is
revealed. Like the witch in "Snow White" who
became angry at the mirror for not telling her
what she wanted to hear, we criticize the
mirror-our spouse-in the marriage. We end up
communicating to him or her: This marriage isn't
good. You're doing something wrong. We need
to get this fixed.
Once you are internally
convinced that your marriage is wrong, you will
never be able to change it externally; no matter
how much you work on your attitude or
behavior. People in troubled marriages
seldom grasp the fact that bad marriages cannot
become good ones by external pressure.
External marriage-enrichment techniques do not
work unless you begin by changing your perception
of the marriage.
How do you see your
marriage now? Is it precious to you?
Do you honor, appreciate, and place worth on your
marriage-as it is? If your view of marriage
is fundamentally flawed, all the energies and
strategies you are using (thinking your marriage
will be better if we just do this or we just
change that) will end in failure.
Unless you honor your
marriage union first-without conditions-your
tactics will come across as manipulative
strategies to get your spouse to do what you
want. This smacks of duplicity and
insincerity. You must work on your marriage
because you believe it is valuable, not because
you are trying to make it valuable.
Quick-fix manipulations do not a good marriage
make.
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