Seminar Part 3
Wives, I am going to share this awareness exercise with you today: Notice when you talk about your husband to others. What is it that you are saying? Are you complaining about him? What are you justifying? Are you looking for agreement? How would you react if your family and friends did not agree with your point of view? Notice that the more you talk about your husband's shortcomings, the more real they become, especially if you get the agreement. Consider that by complaining you are digging a deeper and deeper grave for your marriage.
When I first got married and I was having a bad week and so I went to my mom complaing. My mom stopped me and basically told me, this is your husband and you love him. If you want me to love him, you can not come to me telling me only the bad things. I don't remeber her exact words but she let me know that most of her perspective of him came from what I told her and so I needed to make my words about him count. This is something I have come to realize applies with anyone I talk to about my family. Complaing is easy. Pointing out your families strengths and good things is a lot harder.
ReplyDeleteThe relationship between my wife and family was strained for a while because of this. I essentially had to go back and tell them that I was wrong for coming to them with only the negative and never saying positive things about her. I think we're all guilty of this until we learn that this hurts everyone involved.
ReplyDeleteTo the first comment: Kudos to your mother for giving you such great advice! That is a lesson that many of us had to learn the hard way!
ReplyDeleteTo the second comment: Kudos to you for accepting responsibility for your words and actions an correcting your mistake! Many people would not have the courage and conviction to do so!