Are you ever guilty of pressuring your spouse? You know the sort of thing I mean. You want to do something while your spouse had other ideas, so you resort to tears and pouting and making your spouse feel guilty – all what I would call emotional blackmail to get your own way.
Or it might work this way. You continually make your spouse feel guilty by being negative about what they want to do and listing all the reasons why it’s not a good idea and won’t work. Worse still is getting the children on side and using them, forcing them to choose sides or even, and I’ve seen this happen, bribing the children to go along with your point of view rather than the other one your spouse is proposing.
Another one is you might do what your spouse wants but it is less than graciously. It’s done with an attitude of sighs, grumbling and being a martyr. Worse still next time there’s a difference of opinion you remind them not so subtly of how many time we have given in to what they want and now it is your turn.
Of course there’s always the other case where it turns into a real yelling match that results in both of you going your separate ways.
All of the situations I have mentioned above are not helpful in a marriage. But they are something I see in relationships all the time. But before we jump in and criticize others, if we’re honest with ourselves, haven’t we all engaged in at least one of them from time to time to get our own way? I suspect we have.
That’s the trouble, sometimes in marriage. Marriage becomes not a partnership, working and making decision together, but a game of one-up-man-ship. That’s because we are too often focused on what we want and getting our own way than on pleasing our spouse. That is not love.
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