Sometimes progress in your marriage relationship can be a very slow process and the same issue comes up over and over. If we talked it through and came to an understanding, why do we have to go back through it again and again? There are a couple of obvious reasons:
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We are all human! We have habits that are hard to break, baggage that is hard to overcome. Sometimes we forget or struggle with selfishness. We need reminding just how important this is to our spouse.
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Problems are complex and they evolve. We may think we have resolved an issue
but in fact we have addressed only an aspect of it. Next time we’ll focus on a different aspect. It is like layers of an onion getting peeled away. Each time you peel a layer you get closer to the heart of the issue and the final resolution. -
And we change! Something important to your spouse now may not be so key at a different stage in life. We change as our circumstances change and that is just a part of life.
My challenge to you is to think of these recurring problems differently. As I look back on my life-long struggle with weight, I see a yo-yo pattern of limited success followed by failure again and again. That is how I looked at it and it became very discouraging. Why try when failure would follow?
Now I can see the layers of the onion were peeling off and the whole process brought personal growth. And recently I have learned some things about my stinking thinking that have opened the doors to a hopeful attitude. If I continue thinking of relapse as failure then I will be discouraged and stuck.
Look at it this way… when you take 5 steps forward that is success, and 2 backwards is failure right? No! 5 forward and 2 back will still get you to your goal if you keep moving!! It is wrong to see failure when we or our spouse are not perfect. We should never expect perfection from ourselves or others. So when those pesky issues recur, don’t be surprised. Talk them through again, practice forgiveness, and get moving in the right direction, step by step!
Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:4
One of the most important things that you can do to improve the quality of your relationship is to take personal responsibility for your own personal growth. Take a look at those boxes in the shop. How many of them are YOUR boxes of clutter? Do an honest self-assessment. Independent of your spouse, you need to evaluate what areas in your life need work. And then communicate that to your spouse so that she can be actively involved in the process of helping you deal with your issues.
arms. It was years of that kind of love and patience, coming from my husband, that turned me around inside. He was the instrument of God that started the healing and refining in my soul.
close. Some of us begin our marriage with baggage that we carry from when we grew up. We seldom begin with a “clean shop” so to speak. Before we come back from the honeymoon our shop is already piled with clutter.
Sometimes our marriages, just like the shop, get all cluttered up. We begin with small problems. Those problems, when left unresolved, cause other problems. A husband may have a habit of not remembering to call when coming home late from work. At first, his wife gets upset about the cold dinners, eating alone and disappointed children. She lets him know how upset she is about his lack of consideration, and then she nags him about it for several months with no fruit. He gets upset about the nagging, and she eventually quits bringing it up, burying her feelings. Resentment and bitterness fester causing a noticeable distance in their relationship. He comments about how cold she has become and how he misses being affectionate. She responds in cold silence. He is totally unaware that his lack of consideration has snowballed into a mini cold war. What started as a simple problem grew into a huge problem. Over time, add five or six other issues into the mix, compounded by unspoken needs and expectations, and you have a real mess. Just like the shop. And you’re left wondering how you begin to get this mess cleaned up.