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.

Release the Hurt

"Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?"

 -- Quote from Buckeye BonusMom on FB 

This applies to another blog I do called "Yours, Mine, & Ours" but I felt like this quote really applied to marriage too. It is inevitable that we are going to non-intentionally hurt our spouse emotionally from time to time and in varying degrees. You may not think about something before you speak it or you may not know how to word it in a way that embraces rather than pushes them away - hurting your spouse. You may do something that you know in hindsight was stupid and know that you hurt your spouse, or maybe you've said or done something that you are unaware of that hurt your spouse. 

 Whatever the source of the affliction, be willing to work through it together, help one another through the healing process of it all. Learn how to express yourself better so that it doesn't attack your spouse, learn to listen, learn to be a team and then release the hurt, the fear and move forward in strength.

"So you can have a disagreement and still love each other and not get divorced?"

I have always felt that talking in private away from children was good for the marriage, showing respect for one another, putting each other first, and not demeaning each others authority or as a person in light of your children or stepchildren. I still feel that way. However, a new light has come into play for me with this.

Think about this... how did you feel growing up and watching your parents solve or maybe not solve arguments, disagreements, opinions? Did they show you that effective communication could come about with solving issues? Or did they fight and you never saw anything positive come from it? Do you feel negative feelings or positive feelings towards how your own parents handled conflicts in their marriage? Does it feel good to have witnessed what you did with your own parents? Are you affected by their interactions for the good or for the bad?

Now think about your own kids, how do you want them to feel towards you regarding how to handle conflict, disagreements, different opinions etc. Would you like them to feel resentment toward you because of negativity that was displayed between you and your spouse? Would you feel sad or hurt that they felt this way towards you? What can you do to show them that two people can have a disagreement and it be okay - would that be like a new trend? Our therapist said something to the lines of children saying, "So you can have a disagreement and still love each other and not get divorced?" What about just showing them how to work through conflict?

So, what if you don't know how to work through conflict? No matter where you are at in your marriage (unless there is abuse going on) therapy can do wonders with teaching you new ways, new insights, and coming together as one. Sometimes a mediator to show you the way is just what you need. I would also highly recommend to get a therapist who focuses on emotional focused therapy, as talked in the "Hold Me Tight" by Sue Johnson book.

You have to remember that we all have room for improvement, no matter how old you are, no matter how many years you've been married. Get the "tools" you need with each other and work towards a better future for your marriage relationship and for your family. What you display or don't display in front of them goes a long way either negatively or positively in their own life. And yes, just because we are subjects from our past, doesn't mean that we can't change the cycle, it doesn't mean that we can't better ourselves so that we can have good marriage. We don't have to be a carbon copy of something maybe we didn't like in our parents marriage. At the same time, perhaps you found some positive and insightful moments in your parents marriage that you can take and enhance your own marriage as well. And kudos to those parents who showed their kids such positivity! Knowing what our spouse went through as a kid, can help us understand what makes certain aspects of communication hard for them now, but that doesn't mean it has it has to be excused... you can relearn or reprogram yourself to handle situations in the best way for you and your spouse, for your marriage, and for your family.

Some situations should obviously be talked privately between you and your spouse and you should know what those are - most of us are pretty intelligent when it comes to such things. But a new light came on for me recently about discussing even opinions in front of our children /stepchildren. Show them the process of effective communication, learning about the need to understand point of views, and working it through. What a great teaching moment that would be for them, for all of their relationships in life, but especially when they get married.

Would it be great if your kids learned effective communication through you and your spouse? Their parents? And/or bio-parent/step-parent? Would you want your kids to learn effective communication through you and take that into their own marriages in the future? So they can resolve conflicts and strengthen their marriage from the get-go? What an amazing difference that would make in their own lives! What a difference it would make in your own life and marriage!