What Are You Thinking?

Scenario: Husband comes home from a long trip and finds the house quiet and everyone asleep. He told his wife earlier in the day that he'd like something to eat when he gets home, as usual. He would normally call her when he is about 20 minutes away so that the food could be hot, but he has not gotten an answer. This particular day they had gotten into a small argument around lunch time. So he comes home, walks in the kitchen and he doesn't see any food. Angry, feeling neglected and unimportant he goes to the bedroom to find his wife sleep in the bed. Also in the bed is their 2 year old son who he does not like sleeping with them because he sleeps to bad and he is too old for that. Husband goes to fix himself a sandwich then goes to bed in the guest room, still angry. The next morning when his wife wakes up and tries to greet him with a kiss he is stand-offish and resistant.

The above scenario happens all the time in marriage. The content of the offenses may vary, but how they play out are very similar. Allow me to fill in some of the blanks that will hopefully shed more light on how you can improve your marriage almost instantly. You must always remember that you have a choice in what you believe. Because you have a choice in what you believe, most of the times you have more control over how you feel and how you react to things than you think. The husband in the above scenario took it personal that he did not have anything prepared to eat when he got home. He felt like he did not matter much and he felt like a failure because the argument earlier was about his failures. In order for him to take it personal and be offended, he had to make some decisions about what to believe. What if he would have believed that she fell asleep trying to put their son to sleep because he had a tooth ache and was cranky? Or what if he believed that she was trying to make sure their son was sleep when he got home so they could be intimate after he ate dinner, but she fell asleep as humans sometimes do? Had he believed either of these then he would not have been able to take the situation personal because what he chose to believe did not support the idea of "you did this to hurt me" or "this happened because you don't think I'm important enough."

Based on the fact that he was offended and upset, it is apparent that he chose to believe a more negative thought. Perhaps he chose to believe that his wife was thinking about herself and not him so it didn't matter to her if she was sleep when he got home. Or maybe he believed that his wife was still upset from earlier and since she always holds on to things too long he knows she will have an attitude in the morning. He could have possible even believed that she heard him pull up and jumped in the bed to act sleep so she would not have to deal with him. All of these thoughts could have ushered him into the emotional place where he was that night and the next morning.

The point I am making, and the most important thing that I hope you get is that you have a choice. You can choose to believe the best instead of the worst. What you believe directly affects how you feel because you cannot have positive feelings when you have negative thoughts, and you cannot have negative feelings when you have positive thoughts. Choosing to think positive prevents you from being emotionally overcharged and allows you the space to talk about what happened in a calm manner. Perhaps she did do it intentionally and was trying to be mean, but believing something more positive at least helps them to be able to talk about it. And even in talking about it, he still has a choice to believe the positive, i.e. "She was being intentionally mean, but it's not because she doesn't love me, nor because she doesn't want to be on my team anymore."

So from today forward, be about the business of choosing the more positive thoughts. Not so that you can live in a fairytale land of lies, but so that you can deal with your spouse in a more authentic way that is not clouded by emotional pains.