The following is a list of the 5 things you may want to subtract from your marriage if you find out that you are doing them. Share this list with your spouse. We printed it out and put it on our fridge for a week. It helps to give us a gentle reminder.
- Rolling Your Eyes
- Regularly Putting Your Kids Before Your Husband
- Walking Away in Harsh Silence
- Who Needs Fashion Attitude
- The Public Put Down
Of these 5 things you don’t want in your marriage. You want to get rid of them if you find out you have them. The hardest elements for me was Who Needs Fashion Attitude and Regularly Putting Your Kids Before Your Husband.
You can do it – but let’s talk about each of these and how to get rid of them.
Rolling Your Eyes
Whenever your spouse says or does something you do not like; you may show contempt for their idea and for them by rolling your eyes. You may not mean to be contemptuous, but the act of rolling your eyes is exactly that. It can cause your spouse to shutdown or withdraw. It can hurt their feelings as much as if not more so than a verbal insult.
The best way to stop doing this it to try and identify what it is that causes you to roll your eyes. One of the reasons I used to roll my eyes at my husband is that he could take forever to make his point. He always listed the elements that carried him to his point of view. Sometimes his logic is very circuitous and his method of speaking is equally circuitous.
I’d roll my eyes and it insulted him. Part of loving someone is accepting them, warts and all. This is how he talks. He isn’t trying to minimize how I feel or what I am saying. He is expressing himself. It took a while, but once I accepted that – I limited my frustration and my eye rolls stopped and we were less stymied.
My Kids Need Me First
If you push your spouse away regularly because your kids need you or you allow your children to trump your conversations with your husband regularly – chances are your parenting standards are higher than your marriage standards. While you need to possess high standards for your parenting, not at the cost to your marriage.
It’s important to verbally and physically connect with your spouse. Your children also need to learn to respect the needs of their parents. Children benefit from strong parental bonds. Hold hands often, talk often and even when your busy and clamoring children surround you, keep your physical contact high.
Teach your children to say: excuse me, when they want to interrupt. Teach them patience to wait, because it’s important to not sublimate your spouse and his or her needs. Also, you can set a bad precedent when you let your children interrupt all the time. Teach your children the difference between an emergency when they have to interrupt and when it is just something that isn’t – so they will learn to wait. Everyone in the family benefits from this.