Forgiveness

"I’m often asked, “But what if my spouse isn’t willing to forgive me?” That is not your problem. Your responsibility is to admit your mistake and ask forgiveness. You have not taken the first step until you have confessed your own failures. Then your spouse has a choice: to forgive or not to forgive. At any rate, your conscience is clear, and you can now ask God to help you be a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem." -- The Agape Connection

Make Your Mate Your Top Priority

"Do you habitually say hello or good-bye to your mate as one of you enters or exits the home? It's the least you can do to acknowledge that your mate's presence means something to you. A simple hello says, 'I'm happy to see you. I'm here for you.' A sincere good-bye says, 'I know you're going out into the world now, & I care that you're leaving. I'll miss you.' Make your mate your top priority." --Marriage Missions International

 Something I want to touch on with this is something I've learned recently. If you and your spouse have traditions within the marriage - say you watch a particular TV show together each week, or other activities, date night even... and one of you doesn't show up or makes other things you are doing more of a priority, it can feel like you're not caring about your spouse, it can feel like you don't care about those moments together with your spouse, that they aren't important - when traditions in marriage are part of the glue that holds marriage together, that makes marriage work, that makes marriage a happy place to be.  

If your spouse is counting on you for something that has become ritual in your marriage, do it without fail and don't be late, unless you both mutually agree on changing things up. Those moments fill up the love tanks for the both of you, those moments speak volumes of positive reinforcement of how important both of you are to each other, that you want to be with each other, that it is important to take time out of our busy lives and focus on the love of your life.

Healthy Conflict Resolution Tip

"Healthy Conflict Resolution Tip: "Define the One Issue. Make sure there is only one issue & that both of you are discussing that same issue. Sounds simple, right? But most couples don't define their issues, so they end up arguing about different issues when they think they're talking about the same thing" -Gary Oliver. "A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions" -Proverbs 18:2." -- Marriage Missions International on FB

Choose To Be Happy ~ Part 2

These are more thoughts off of one of my recent blog posts "Choose To Be Happy".

I think there is a happy balance with the phrase "Choose To Be Happy", what I mean by that is this ::

If you were just rude, disrespectful to your spouse or if you hurt your spouses feelings and you did nothing to take responsibility for it - like an acknowledgment that what you did was wrong, in essence an apology, and perhaps letting your spouse air their feelings on how you made them feel - working through the hurt of it all. So, if you didn't do that, and you suddenly became nice and made it seem like nothing ever happened, it doesn't make it all go away. What it does do is create a sense of hurt that you could care less about your spouse, it creates a negative feeling within the marriage and between the two of you. If you were suddenly nice and your spouse wasn't responsive in the way you'd like them to be (loving, nice back etc.), maybe backtrack a bit and see if you didn't follow through with what should have happened. You cannot expect your spouse to suddenly be happy with you because after all, you treated your spouse like crap, turned around and was nice for a moment and expect them to be lovey towards you. You cannot expect them to choose to be happy in spite of rudeness you dished out to them. Life and love does not work that way.

If there is a serious issue in your marriage that has hurt you or your spouse deeply and it has never been resolved. Stop letting it eat at you and resolve it. Choose to apologize to your spouse, choose to listen to your spouse and the hurt that they are feeling, choose to understand, choose to work through it, choose to love and stop hurting, choose to let go of the hurt, resentment, grudges and choose to forgive, choose to learn to love in the way your spouse feels love. Holding onto it isn't doing you or your spouse any good.

Of course, if you expect your spouse to be lovey towards you after all these years of hurt that they've felt and now there is resentment because you never cared about their feelings and you keep trying and trying to get a positive response from them, it seems that most people react the opposite way and the resentment digs deeper. While your spouse is trying to reach out to receive their own love language, and probably trying to show you love, it is actually backfiring with a deeper issue. The spouse that hurt the other spouse and is now trying to do what he or she thinks is best for the marriage, for him or her, or what they are craving within the marriage for themselves is actually digging at the hurt and creating a bigger hole because your spouse over the years has never talked with you regarding the initial hurt they caused. I think sometimes spouses may not have a clue as to why their spouse responds with negativity and the cycle continues. But at the same time, what good are you doing to yourself with resentment? What good is that doing to your relationship and marriage? What about how we cannot be at our best with others when we are not at best with ourselves?

Rudeness, disrespect, resentment, grudges are not love, it does not lift your marriage to new heights, it is does not lift your spouse, it does not lift yourself. It seem that the adversary is against anything positive and will fight you to the death if you go that direction, especially in families. And if your marriage or family is already caught in a spinning tornado, the fury of the adversary is going to hit harder and harder unless you both take the necessary steps to stop the negative cycle. Both of you need to choose... and choose a number of ways for that happiness to just swell within your hearts, which will overflow into your marriage. And sometimes to get the spinning to stop, one of you has to take that step. If you continue to wait for the other and the other doesn't make the step, the spinning will continue. And it isn't just affecting your marriage, but it is affecting both of you individually.

The more you look at the negative aspects of what your spouse is doing, even in light of one event that took place that made an issue that was not resolved, that has hurt you over the years and your spouse has not seemed to care about it, or seem to care about doing their part, or seem to want to change what needs to be changed - do you think holding onto that hurt for yourself or adding to it with things you suddenly aren't liking is going to help you feel better? What about continuing to do your part? Does it suddenly all stop because your spouse isn't doing what you think your spouse should be doing? Do they even know how you're feeling? Or have you just become a wall to them? Is there a bad cycle going on here? Negative feeds negative. Do you think that your feelings towards the hurt are helping the marriage? Maybe you've tried to work through it through therapy? But is therapy for both of you or just one of you? What are your views? Are you there to "fix" the other person, or are you there together, as equals to fix the marriage as a whole? To learn to love each others love language, as well as learn to effectively communicate and to practice unconditional love.

So your spouse hasn't apologized and you don't ever see them doing it. Do you think you might be putting a condition on love (on your part) if this has been going on for several years? I wonder if the spouse that is hurt, could choose to be happy, choose to continue to do their part, and perhaps help get the marriage to a place where the negative cycle beings to stop and the healing from that issue so long ago can take place. Are you happy with where your marriage is at now? Do you want it to continue this way in misery for the next year, 5 years, 10 years? So why not someone make the change that needs to occur. So, while you are still choosing to do your part, you are choosing love and you are choosing to keep your marriage above the water. I'm not saying that when you choose to stop your end of the negative cycle that everything becomes okay, but it does help immensely. Choose it and you will see how much change you feel in yourself, you'll stop having a constant battle within yourself. God did not intend for you to live in resentment, hurt, anxiety. God wants you to be happy, but you have to choose that. And you do have the ability to choose it no matter if your spouse has not apologized to you. Maybe your spouse never will, do you want to sentence yourself to a lifetime of resentment? It is no way to live and is robbing you of all that life and marriage has to offer.

One of my favorite quotes is by Thomas S. Monson :: "Choose your love. Love your choice." It really isn't rocket science. We all make mistakes, we all need to work through them together, forgive and love our choice.