Your happiness is your responsibility, not your spouse’s. If you got married looking for happiness then that may be the reason you are struggling.
Read morePrioritize Your Friendship
Your friendship is foundational for your marriage. When you strengthen your friendship you strengthen your marriage.
Read moreFear And Pride Are Your Enemies
Fear and Pride are the “evil twins” of life and marriage. Fear opens the door and pride walks in. When you are operating in pride, you are grave danger!
Read moreLove Is Not Blind But Anger Is!
You must learn how to handle your anger. If you do not, it can cost you more than you are willing to pay.
Read moreBecome A Professional Forgiver
Forgiveness is the key to emotional wholeness.
Read moreBe Committed To Personal Development
Personal development must be a top priority if you are going to do marriage and/or life well.
Read moreDo Not Say Unloving Things To One Another
You have to be careful of what you say to your partner. Do not let your mouth write a check that your heart can’t cash.
Read moreManage Your Expectations
When you decided to get married, what did you expect? What beliefs did you have that turned out to be different than your reality? Did you know that NOBODY marries the person they think they married? You may be shocked by that but it is true.
The thing about your expectations when it comes to marriage is that most of them, if not all of them, are based on thoughts and desires you had before you ever met your partner. Think about that. Your idea of a husband or wife was already formed when you met the person you married. That means that your ideas about a spouse were not created with your current spouse in mind. No one on the planet, including your current spouse, can fit into your "spouse idea box" that you created in your head. By default that makes it unrealistic...fantasy.
Your "Spouse Fantasy" automatically creates unrealistic expectations, most of which you never speak. The reason it is important to explore your expectations is because your level of frustration will match your level of unmet expectations. Without a better understanding, you will blame your partner for you unmet expectations that they never agreed to meet.
Example: I recently discovered that my wife had a fantasy that her husband would take care of the maintenance of her car like she imagined. What she did not know is that the husband she chose has had 11 (ELEVEN) cars of his own and the current one is the first one that he has consistently gotten the oil changed.
What you may think is common sense is only common because you learned it. The question is, did your spouse learn it? Did they learn it the way you learned it? Did learning it impact them the way it did you?
*NEWS FLASH*
YOUR PARTNER WAS NOT RAISED TO BE THE SPOUSE YOU NEED
The reason you want to manage your expectations is because they are yours. You are the one who suffers when they are not met. I'm not saying do not have expectations. I'm saying to communicate them with your partner and then you both agree on them. The only expectations that truly matter in the marriage are the ones you both agree on.
If you are going to have a successful marriage, you will have to divorce the fantasy in your head so that you can learn to love the stranger in your bed.
Stay tuned for tomorrow...
Marriage Is God's Idea
Before I get into today’s insight, I want to give a little back story on why I chose the 30 things I chose. What I am sharing with you over these 30 days are not random suggestions about marriage. I asked myself the question, “If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, what would I tell people about marriage to help them create a successful marriage if no one told them anything else?” That is how these things came to be. I share this backstory to help you understand how important these things are. These are all foundational.
HERE'S THE THING...
If you are going to have a successful marriage, it is very important for you to understand that marriage is God’s idea. That means that He created it. Why does it matter that we understand who created it? Because the creator of something is the one who determines the purpose of it and how it works best.
When you buy a Samsung refrigerator, you don’t look to Maytag to tell you how to best operate Samsung’s product. Maytag may also make refrigerators, so there may be similarities, but to get the best out of your Samsung you would be wise to look to Samsung because they are the one’s who created the product.
In the same way, because God created marriage, He is the one who is best qualified to tell you how to make it successful. You do not have to believe it in order for it to be true no more than you have to believe in gravity for it to be true. However, you will suffer the natural consequences of going against gravity, just as you will suffer the natural consequences of doing marriage your way.
Care More About What You Are Giving Than What You Are Receiving
If you are going to create a successful marriage you will have to mature to the place where you focus more on what you are giving than what you are receiving. I know this opposite of what society promotes, however it is key to not getting trapped in pride.
Pride is the opposite of Love. Love is not about you, it is about the person you are loving. However, Pride is all about "your needs, your wants, your hurts, your desires," etc. You cannot walk in Love and pride at the same time. And pride is at the root of 100% of divorces.
This is not an invitation for abuse. When you Love appropriately then your boundaries will guide you away from abuse. Hopefully you are not in an abusive or toxic relationship. If you are, why??
Remember, Love is not a boomerang that you throw out expecting it to return. That is what we call pride. Love, on the other hand, has no expectation of a return. So when you give it, give it because you want to and not to get something back from your partner.
"Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other." - Romans 12:10