Reality Check: 6 Realities In
Marriage - Part 2
By Gary D. Chapman
It's time to throw out the myths and get ready to accept six positive realities.
(Continued from the previous two Marriage Tips: Myths On Marriage and Realities-Part 1.)
Reality 4: My actions are not controlled by my emotions
Pop psychology pushes the myths that "you are what you feel" and that authentic living is being "true to your feelings." It's a short leap from that kind of thinking to "If I don't love my spouse, I might as well get out. It would be hypocritical to stay married."
People are more than their emotions. Human beings respond to life in four ways: with thoughts, feelings, desires and actions.
Thoughts interpret experience. You see dirty dishes in the sink at 10:30 p.m. and interpret that your wife is lazy. You see and hear your husband mowing the grass and interpret that he is a responsible individual.
Emotions accompany thoughts. If you think your wife is lazy, you might feel disappointment, anger or frustration. If you think your husband is responsible, you might feel grateful, encouraged or happy.
Your desires respond to your thoughts and feelings. Those dirty dishes may create a desire to give your wife a lecture. Seeing your husband hard at work on the lawn may give you a desire to take him lemonade or to express your thanks when he's done.
Either way, eventually you take action . If you let your negative emotions and desires control your actions, you'll make the situation worse with a negative action - and that stimulates a negative response in your spouse.
But you've got a brain. You can reason, "What's the best thing to do?" How about washing the dishes yourself and saying, "I love you. I didn't want you to have to face those dishes in the morning"? How about handing your husband a glass of lemonade with a word of thanks instead of "It's about time you mowed that jungle!"
Ultimately, your actions are far more important than your emotions. In fact, your actions will affect your emotions. If you're depressed and a friend calls to ask you out for a root beer float, you could deny your desire to mope and instead choose an action that will get you out where you can experience other, more positive emotions.
Don't buy the myth that your emotions dictate your actions. You're in charge of what you do, and positive actions hold the potential to bring healing to your relationship.
Reality 5: Admitting my imperfections doesn't mean I'm a failure
You know what I hear from most couples when they come in for counseling? He says, "She's critical of my job. She puts me down in front of the kids." She offers, "He's married to his job and has no time for me. He expects me to be a slave." Each points a finger at what the other has done to make the marriage miserable.
Over the years, their blame habit has built up a stone wall between them, a monument to self-centered living and a barrier to marital intimacy.
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Admitting your own past failures means
you're no longer using your spouse's
failures as an excuse for your own.
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The wall can be demolished, but it requires both partners to admit that they've failed each other. Many times, one spouse is more at fault than the other, but neither is perfect. Your spouse knows you've failed, and you know it. Acknowledging your imperfections is simply admitting you're human.
Then get free. Asking for forgiveness of past failures is one of the most liberating of all human experiences. Even if you're the only one acknowledging your imperfection, you begin to tear down that wall.
Hang in there. If you've hurt your spouse deeply, he or she may question the sincerity of your plea for forgiveness. He or she may not express forgiveness at first, but you've done the best thing you can do with a failure of the past and you've planted the idea that the future is going to be different.
Admitting your past actions doesn't mean you're accepting all the responsibility for your troubled marriage. It means you're no longer using your spouse's failures as an excuse for your own. You're taking responsibility for your own actions and you're paving the road of hope for a new future.
Reality 6: Love is the most powerful weapon for good
French novelist Victor Hugo wrote, "The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved." Sigmund Freud said, "Love is the first requirement of mental health." Everyone agrees that love holds a central place in our search for meaning. But somehow we've ended up focusing more on receiving love than on giving it.
Folks who come to me for counseling say things like, "If she'd just be a little more affectionate, then I could be more responsive to her." See how this husband waits for love before he'll give it? In a relationship, someone's got to take the initiative. Why do we always expect it to be the other person?
To put love to work as the most powerful weapon for good, you've got to stop thinking of love as an emotion. Love is an attitude followed by appropriate behavior.
Love says, "I choose to look out for your interests. How may I help you?" Then love is expressed in actions.
And the good news is that, because it's not an emotion, love can be chosen and learned.
The apostle Paul wrote to husbands, "Love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Eph. 5:25). In another letter, Paul challenged the older women to "train the younger women to love their husbands" (Titus 2:4).
Reality Living, Reality Loving
Your attitudes and actions can stimulate positive emotions and even actions in your spouse. As you behave with real love and your spouse responds, you'll find your love growing - in both actions and emotions.
So even for a marriage that has grown cold, there's always hope - because there's always the option of reality love.
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Gary D. Chapman, Ph.D., is a marriage and relationship expert and best-selling author of numerous books, including The Five Love Languages (Moody) and Covenant Marriage (Broadman & Holman).
Copyright © 2004 by Gary D. Chapman |