Have you ever reached that point in marriage where it seems like everything is bad? Things just aren’t going well or they aren’t going the way you had expected. Take the time to ask yourself…is it really ALL bad?
Here is what tends to happen in these situations. We are so focused on the “bad” we fail to see the good.
I have been there…many times. Throughout the course of 20 years of marriage, there have been ups and there have been downs. What I especially remember in my earlier years of marriage is that thinking during the downs it was all bad.
I couldn’t see anything good about my marriage. I couldn’t see anything good about my husband. But the truth is that there were goods things in my marriage and there were certainly good things in my husband. I just couldn’t recognize them because I was too wrapped up in the bad.
Sometimes the only way to really combat this is to come up with a good for every bad you can think of. It’s kind of like habits. To break a habit you usually have to replace it with a new one.
So replace the bad with something good. For instance, it’s bad that my husband never picks up after himself (this is just an example). If you were to really focus on this issue, it could easily become a label you place on your husband.
Sure, it’s not nice for someone to make a mess and leave it for you. But instead of concentrating on that, think about something good. It’s good that my husband goes to work everyday and works hard to take care of the family.
What often happens is that when you weigh the bad against the good, the good tends to stand out. Working hard and taking care of the family is much bigger than not cleaning up messes.
We all have things we could work on in our marriages. But when I hear someone say everything about their marriage is bad or everything about their spouse is bad, I have to ask if that’s really true. Because it’s probably not.
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Photo by Doug in Flickr