Is it Really All that Important? – Part 3

Have you ever noticed how destructive anger can be? When we are angry, nothing better get in our way, or it’s likely to get knocked down, run over and trampled underfoot. While that can be useful when the thing we get angry at is a threat to our family, most of the time, it’s something much less sinister, but with just as strong a result.

Why do we get angry? Often, our anger doesn’t really have anything to do with a threat, rather it’s anger caused by pride. In other words, we get angry because something threatens our opinion of ourselves. Someone treats us or speaks of us as less than we think we deserve and the anger takes over.

This happens all the time in marriages. One marriage partner or the other says something, intending it to be helpful, and the other one explodes. Or, one doesn’t treat the other one as they think they deserve to be treated and the explosion comes.

Those explosions are always destructive. They destroy your communication and your relationship; they can even destroy your marriage.

Think back to the last time you were angry with your wife. Was what you were angry about really all that important? How about when you compare it to your marriage; is it still so important? Were you being destructive just because you didn’t get your way?

When we compare the value of that thing we get angry about to the value of our marriage, suddenly it seems like we were angry about something that’s not all that important. In other words, we’re allowing ourselves to damage something important for something that isn’t important. That doesn’t sound like a good tradeoff to me.

It’s important to maintain the right perspective on these things. That perspective includes being sure that we guard those things which are valuable to us, and we dismiss those that aren’t. Sacrificing something of value, in order to attempt to save something unimportant isn’t good business, nor is it good in life.

Is it Really All that Important? – Part 2

Great marriages don’t happen by accident, all great marriages require work on the part of both marriage partners. Any time you bring two people together, whether it be for work, recreation or in a marriage, there has to be shared goals and interests, communication, and agreement. Of course, sharing goals, interests and coming to agreement require the other thing I mentioned, communication.

No two people agree perfectly about everything. While they may find agreement on many things, even most things, there are always going to be some percentage of things that they don’t see eye to eye on. Whether major or minor, those things can be what cause problems between them.

All too often, those few points of disagreement end up taking a larger role in our marriages than they deserve. Instead of focusing on the myriad of things that we are in agreement about, we focus on those areas where we disagree, even though they might not be worth the time.

Any couple, coming together in marriage, needs to realize that they are not the same (if they don’t realize that, they’ve got bigger problems). They’ve come from different backgrounds; with different customs, habits, mannerisms and ways of doing things. Those differences are bound to cause a clash sometime or other. Hopefully, we can keep it to a small clash.

How we deal with those clashes is what can make our marriage wonderful or a nightmare. There are those who always insist that everything has to be done their way. While that might make their marriage wonderful for themselves, it is bound to make it a nightmare for their partner. Then there are those who are the opposite, becoming the martyr and allowing the other to walk all over them. They might make their spouse momentarily happy, at a price of making themselves bitter and miserable.

Solid relationships happen when both partners learn how to compromise. For many of us, this is a strange term; we are used to fighting things out, until one or the other wins. That makes one person a 100% winner and the other a 100% loser. When we compromise, each of us gets to be a 50% winner. That looks to me like a better plan.

Compromise is based upon each partner giving up a little, in order to reach a middle ground that is good for both of them. That middle ground probably won’t be perfect for either party, but it will be something that both can comfortably live with.

One of the keys to making an effective compromise is determining what’s really important to you and what is not. Just like two nations coming to the negotiating table, you don’t want to negotiate away the things that are important. On the other hand, giving away the unimportant things, as a good-faith gesture, helps your partner give away their unimportant things as well.

If something is not important, yet you still try to hang on to it, you’re operating in pride; like the macho guy who says, “I’m king of the castle. I command. We do everything my way.” If you want to be that way, I hope you like being single, because no woman in her right mind will want to stay married to you.

On the other hand, a man who learns how to openly discuss disagreements with his spouse, coming to an agreement that works for both of them, is a man who will have peace and love in his home. The question is, which are you?

Is it Really All that Important?

Have you ever noticed how quickly and efficiently women can destroy your plans? It doesn’t matter if it’s your wife, your mother or your daughter, any women seems to have this innate ability to totally abolish whatever plans you have. You know that saying, “The best laid plans of mice and men…” I’ve never heard the end of it but it think it should say, “…were destroyed by a woman.”

Okay, I know we all tend to grumble when our wives mess up our plans, but enough grumbling. Let me ask you, when your wife messes up your plans, is she doing it with malice? Is she really trying to hurt you? Is she really trying to show you that your plans aren’t important? Is she out to get you? For that matter, where those plans really all that important after all?

No, your wife isn’t out to get you. She just has her own ideas about what’s important, and those ideas obviously aren’t the same as yours are. To her, watching the big game, going on that fishing trip, or going out with your buddies for bowling night just aren’t very important; maybe because they have nothing to do with her.

Really, how important are those things? Granted, you enjoy them and you get to relax for a while. Nothing wrong with that, but is it important?

Let me put this in perspective for you. Are those things more important than your relationship with your wife? Ouch! Yeah, that’s the question that really hurts. When we choose bowling night with the guys, over going out to eat with our wives, we’re telling them, “This is more important to me than you are.” Ouch again! If that’s the way you are acting towards your wife, no wonder she’s giving you the cold shoulder.

Granted, there are things that are important enough that we have to say no to our wife’s desires. When the car is broken down, it’s kind of hard to ignore it and go out to eat. Work sometimes steals time that we would ordinarily be with the family, whether we want it to or not. There are things that you might plan, which just plain have to be done.

That’s not the same as what I’m talking about though. What I’m talking about are the times that we grumble because she messes up plans that really aren’t all that critical. So what if you don’t get the garage cleaned out this weekend, because she wants you to go look at antiques with her. You really didn’t want to clean out the garage anyway. Why complain if she keeps you from fixing the back porch? It’s been broken for six months anyway; another week or two won’t hurt anything.

The key here is in deciding what’s more important. If your relationship with her is more important, then you really have no reason to grumble. On the other hand, if it’s one of those situations like the car being broken down, let her know (without grumbling), she’ll probably understand. 

Compliment Her

There’s this strange phenomenon that seems to happen with married couples. Before the wedding, they can’t think of a single bad characteristic in their future spouse. They are absolutely convinced that the other person is the most perfect example of their gender on the face of the planet. You couldn’t convince them that there is something wrong with that other person.

If only that attitude would stay with us. Unfortunately, after the honeymoon is over, we start seeing all the errors in that other person. It’s very easy to become so focused on their negative traits, that we wonder how we ever could have loved them in the first place.

Your thoughts will affect your love for and attitude towards your wife. There’s no way you can manage to be romantic while you are thinking negatively about her. Oh, you might manage to do a romantic act or two, but you won’t be able to maintain it. Nor will you be able to do those romantic acts with the right attitude; and a romantic act done with a bad attitude just doesn’t come across the way it should.

I want to share a little habit with you that will help you maintain a positive attitude towards your wife, even while everything else in the world is trying to give you a negative one.

Get yourself a piece of paper, small notebook, or file on your computer. Make sure it’s convenient to use, because you’re going to use it ever day. Every day, write down one positive thing about your wife. It can be a character trait, something endearing about her personality, the way she does something, or something she’s done for you. Whatever it is, write it down and date it.

Now, think about that one thing several times throughout the day. Remind yourself of it, why it is special, maybe some memory of how or when that thing showed forth, and why you are glad that your wife is that way.

In the evening, compliment your wife for that thing which you’ve been thinking about all day. Let her know that you appreciate that characteristic, ability or action that you see in her. You will both be building your love for her and building her up at the same time.

Maybe you could add the anticipation factor in here a little too. If you make a habit of this, your wife will soon realize that you are making a habit of complimenting her. She will begin to look forward to hearing what you are going to say. So, put some variety into the when and where of giving her that compliment. One day it could be at dinner; the next day as soon as you walk in the door from work; the next day it could be right before going to bed. It won’t be long before she starts wondering and anticipating that day’s compliment; which of course, will make it all the more special for her.

When Can We Have a Date Night?

For many of us, finding time for one another can be a real challenge. It seems that there are so many other things we have to do, all of which are important, that having time together all too often slips by the wayside.

There are two requirements to making sure you can have time together as a couple. The first one is commitment. If you both aren’t committed to making time for each other, it just isn’t going to happen. Everything else will put pressure on your schedule and before you know it, you’ve gone through another week hardly saying hello to each other. The crazier your schedule is, the more you’ve got to be committed to the idea of spending time together.

The second thing that’s required to make time for each other is imagination. Whoever said that a date night has to be at night? Why can’t it be a breakfast date, or a lunch date, or even a mid-afternoon date? My wife teaches classes most nights, so trying to find a night that’s free for us is more than a challenge, it’s almost impossible. So, we just find another time; our schedules are more flexible during the day, so we go out for lunch, instead of dinner.

Dates don’t have to be expensive to be dates; you don’t have to impress her with how much money you spend on her. It’s not about money, it’s about time. The two of you need time together, without interruptions from the office, the kids, or your in-laws.

Going to the park to feed the ducks, and grabbing a hamburger on the way is just as valid a date as going out to the most expensive restaurant in town. Granted, it’s nice to go out to that fancy restaurant every once in a while, but it doesn’t have to be every time. Sometimes, the simple pleasures are best. If you’ve got to plan and plot to have a date, you’re not going to have one very often. But, if you’ll use your imagination, and grab at the opportunities that present themselves, you can find all the time you need.

Remember, you need to be committed to having time with your wife. If you don’t, I’ll guarantee you that she’s going to feel like everything else in your life is more important to you than she is. Spending money will never make up for time. Writing fancy words won’t either. Women spell love T – I – M – E. 

Share Some Laughter – Part 3

Laughing at yourself and laughing about your circumstances is great, but if you really want a good laugh together, you can start laughing about your past. This is a great cure for those melancholy moments or those days where you’re wife is in an emotional slump.

All of us accumulate humorous things that have happened to us throughout our lives. The old cliché “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” must have first been penned to talk about humans. I mean, if there is anything that is funnier than monkeys, it’s the two legged creatures around us.

Even things that didn’t seem funny at the moment can seem hilarious in retrospect. Events that really put us through our paces suddenly become great stories that get us rockin’ and rollin’ with laughter after the fact. We can look back at ourselves and ask one of life’s great questions, “Why did I do that?” Or, act with shock at ourselves and say, “I can’t believe I did that!”

As I said, this is a great way to overcome those days when she’s feeling a little bit down. It doesn’t matter why she’s down, she might not even know. What matters is that you get her back up again. Well, here’s one way to do it. Find something funny from your past together and share it with her. Have a good laugh together… and if one isn’t enough, I’m sure you’ve got more funny stories to pull from.

Share Some Laughter – Part 2

I remember reading something interesting in a science fiction book a number of years ago. The gist of the story was that a man was returned to the world, who had grown up on another world, amongst aliens. Because of this, he had trouble understanding the most basic human actions and reactions. One of the things he struggled with was understanding laughter.

What I really remember about that story was the way he explained laughter when he finally understood it. He said that people didn’t laugh because things were funny, as everyone had explained to him; people laughed because it hurt, and they were laughing to make it stop hurt.

If you think about it a minute, much of what we laugh at are things that hurt. A comic slips on a banana peel, and we laugh as he falls; a joke that talks about how foolish someone is in a particular situation; a picture of a car that someone has driven off the dock into a boat. They are all painful situations, ether physically or emotionally.

All of us pass trough painful situations, it’s part of life. How we face those situations says a lot about us, and how we help others face them says even more. We can either help them though those situations, lightening their load, or we can become part of the problem, making their load all that much harder to bear.

One of the ways we can help our wives through a difficult situation is to find the humor in that situation and help her see it. Granted, she may not be in the mood to laugh at that exact moment, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t need to laugh. In fact, laughter is one of the best stress relievers there is. By helping her laugh in the midst of that difficult situation, we can help her not only get through it, but overcome it.

How do you find humor in a situation? One way is to talk about how you could explain it to another person. Take a situation where your mother-in-law is a world class champion worrier. If you can help your wife see what it would be like to explain that situation, after the fact, to her mother, it could bring some humor into it. Or, how about trying to see the ridiculousness of your comedy of errors, as if you were watching it in a movie. If you can see it that way, you suddenly see the humor of it. More importantly, you can help your wife see it that way.

It’s always easier to make it through a situation if you can find a way to laugh your way through it. Not only will you be free of the stress, but you will be better able to make good decisions. Ultimately, that will help your relationship with your wife, your family and your life.