I entered my marriage with a whole lot of expectations. Now, going on my fourth year, I realized that if my husband and I are going to stay happily married, I have to throw all of those expectations away. Sayonara, baby.
Because marriage isn’t about getting your partner to meet your expectations, or vice versa. That’s just a recipe for a divorce.
Marriage is a partnership between two human beings perfectly capable of lots of mistakes and failures and hurtful words and lousy behavior. In spite the best of intentions, there will always be opportunities to forgive each other, over and over and over again. For the same things. For new things.
Sure, we grow and learn and become better people. We make goals, strive towards those goals, and even meet those goals. Yay. But at the end of the day, we are still pretty much flawed, and tired, and prone to selfish acts.
Sometimes, I am less selfish than my husband. Sometimes, he is less selfish than me. And because we both know it, we can’t hold those times over each other’s heads and self-righteously demand something neither of us are capable of: perfection. When I forget this and think that I am better, then we are no longer equals and I treat him accordingly. And of course, vice versa. It’s only when I see myself rightly, and I see my husband rightly, that our marriage is where it needs to be.
When I let go of my expectations, like wanting my husband to know what to do without me telling him or wanting him to help me in a certain way or wanting him to change a habit that is frustrating for me, then I am able to make space for all the goodness in him. When I accept him completely for who he is, then I am able to actually enjoy him, quirks and all. When I treat him with respect, I affirm his existence, his value, his being. Just like I would want him to do the same to me.
I used to think of love in all sorts of romantic gushy-feely terms. But right now, in our season of marriage, love seems to boil down to acceptance and respect. May I learn it right and well.
[...] week, I talked about learning acceptance and respect and much of that is also learning to simply be. To simply be me, and to let him simply be, well, [...]