SM Letter #49 - seeing & realizing
LESSONS LEARNED
For a long time, I didn’t see my role in digging a hole in our marriage relationship.
I didn’t see how easy it is for married love to go into auto-pilot, and how easy it can be to take each other for granted more and more.
I didn’t see how I had a big role in that, and how much of a role I had in bickering.
I didn’t see how easy it can be to grow apart, and to even start seeing each other as an enemy.
I’m not the only one, right? I think it’s very common.
It took me decades to realize what was happening.
But once I did realize it, I stopped feeling like we were bad, or failures, or the only ones who felt like this.
I realized I had control of me and I had to use it.
And I realized I did not have control of Brenda and I had to stop acting like I thought I did, because it was never going to happen.
“I only control myself” became a powerful baseline mindset for me to just take responsibility for my own attitudes, words, and behavior.
Whenever I see stories of the same thing, it reminds me how valuable it is.
Here’s one I saw recently -
I remember when I was going to therapy by myself and I started admitting my mistakes and stopped blaming him for our marriage problems.
At first, he was confused and hesitant to even believe my new found humility and awareness.
I remember he would mock me for even going to therapy and thought it was a waste of time and money.
But, I didn’t let his negative response bring me down. I was committed to being the healthiest person I could be for me. Not for him. For me. It’s what I vowed to do!
When you start to change and become a healthier person, your spouse may not like it and may not respond with love, warmth, encouragement and curiosity.
Do not allow their response to bring you down and impact the progress and healing you’ve made.
Unhealthy people usually respond in unhealthy ways when someone they love starts implementing boundaries and makes healthy changes in their life.
In this case, the wife was making the changes and the husband was negative about it. But he eventually saw the change and it made him want the same for himself and for their marriage.
It doesn’t always turn out that way. Every marriage is different.
But no matter what, I still only control myself and am responsible for being who I am.
In our case, Brenda and I both gradually started changing at the same time and were positive about the other person’s efforts.
Then I started seeing, Oh! - the reasons we fell in love? Those reasons are still there.
The expectations and hopes we originally had for marriage? Oh! Those hopes are still there to step into.
And we’re continuing to step into them. Without trying to force the other one to.
WORTH REPEATING
"If you want to get someone right with God it’s probably good to start with you" - Chris Justice
WORTH TRYING
Do you have little mantras? I’ll bet you do, even if you don‘t realize it.
One of mine is “Just don’t make it worse.” I’m not saying I follow it all the time 🙂
Another thing I’m learning is the need to live with the tension of the moment of knowing we’re maybe just not going to agree.
I saw Amanda White summarize those two, saying -
99% of successful communication boils down to two things -
1. Learning to tolerate discomfort
2. Not saying the first thing that pops into your head.
If you cannot sit in someone saying something different than what you believe or giving you a piece of feedback, and not reacting immediately, it's going to be difficult to get the other person to listen to what you have to say.
WORTH REPLYING
I’m convinced that while we all have challenges and things to learn in different areas of our marriages, we each also have valuable experiences and insights.
Even if we’re in a super discouraging patch in our marriage.
Even when we have no confidence because we feel we've mostly had a troubling time.
There are still things each of us know and do that are unique strengths for us.
I don’t want to miss the marital wisdom riches in you.
So for a couple weeks, I’m asking a few questions to learn some of the gold in you that could benefit others.
No one question will be for everyone, but is this one for you?
If you could snap your fingers and change your attitude about one thing, what would it be?
Just hit reply. Or email me at gary@garymorland.com 😊
Thanks!
Gary