This morning’s writing was inspired by real life events.
- Focus on your spouse’s shortcomings (step 1)
- Make sure you vocalize those shortcomings (step 2)
- Refuse to focus on or appreciate your spouse’s strengths
- Keep a running tally of all they have done to hurt you
- Ruminate on the above list and chew that sock
- Also focus on all your virtues and compare and contrast with your spouse’s short comings (step 3)
- ‘Share’ with your kids all your frustrations with your spouse
- Undermine your spouse’s authority when the kids come to you for permission after being told ‘no’ by your spouse
- Refuse to serve your spouse because you feel your needs aren’t being met
- Blame your spouse for all the destructive choices you make because your felt-needs aren’t being met
- Hold onto bitterness and unforgiveness toward your spouse for his/her past mistakes
- Make sure you are committed to micromanaging your spouse ….keep tabs on his or her spiritual growth and shame him for not measuring up or growing as fast as you’d like
- Go outside your marriage to soothe your frustration and disappointments with affairs, porn, alcohol, workaholism, shopping, foodaholism (new word-mine!)
- Make sure you sprinkle your communication with a tone of disgust or snarkiness.
- Have an attitude of entitlement, whatever you do, don’t thank them for the things they do on a daily basis, because, after all, they ‘should’ be doing them anyway, and he or she doesn’t go out of their way to thank you
- Pursue what makes you happy without regard for the impact it may have on them
- If you don’t feel respected, demand respect, because for sure that will work
- Of course the opposite is true as well-make sure if you don’t ‘feel’ love and/or respect for him/her, make sure you let them know and withhold love and respect because that will ‘teach them the lesson they need’
- At the end of the day when your spouse is still mucking up the kitchen mess, whatever you do, don’t get up and help, because after all, you did your 50% today
- And last but certainly not least, don’t forget to shake their sense of security in the marriage by threatening divorce routinely.
Obviously I am being a little ‘sassy’ here. Obviously I don’t want you to wreck your marriage-but these are the marriage wreckers and we all do them! Go through the list. Where have your thoughts and actions matched? It’s pretty obvious that the opposite of these marriage wreckers is the 180 degree turn that needs to happen.
Put yourself in the receiver’s shoes. Imagine if you’re heart was a little or a lot pierced by reading this and you are convicted that you have done one or many of the above, imagine going to your spouse and confessing to him/her that you have, for example, held onto bitterness and unforgiveness for past hurts he/she has inflicted; you realized is was wrong and keeping a wedge between you in your marriage and that you are sorry you hadn’t truly let it go, how holding onto that unforgiveness has ‘punished’ your spouse, but that you are choosing to forgive right now. Imagine if your spouse came to you and communicated something like that. Or that they realized they had been taking you for granted, that they are sorry and they do notice and realize all the little things you do for them and that they appreciate you. What a radical step in the right direction. What a radical opportunity to change course. What a breath of fresh air for your relationship! Imagine if you kept on that track and consistently implemented that change of heart and behavior in your relationship.
We are breathing life into our relationships and voting for our marriages every day by the choices we make based on how we choose to think and focus our thoughts……alternatively we are creating a vacuum, sucking the breath of life out of our relationships. We choose every day.
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