SO, my wife, Jen and I have been talking to a Pastor friend of ours as we continue the process of reconciliation and something she (Jen) said made a profound impact on the Pastor whose name, by the way, is Brian and I'm going to paraphrase some of what he said just to set the scene.....
Pastor Brian was talking about how many people go into a marriage or serious relationship viewing it as a contract. When you sign a contract, you generally do so because you're getting something out of it. The other person feels they are getting something out of it too. Neither of you would sign if you didn't feel it was beneficial to you in some way. This is how most of us view our relationships. We have certain expectations of how things are going to be and tend to keep score in some way causing us to feel angry or cheated if we feel we're putting in more effort and at least from our perspective doing more then our significant other. This of course leads to anger, resentment and fighting. Pastor Brian suggested that we would all be wise to view marriage as a covenant rather then a contract because that enables us to focus on wanting and doing what is best for our significant other without worrying about what they're doing or not doing for us. (Note: This of course does not apply if you're being abused in any way or cheated on).
We were all agreeing that it sounded great in principle but wasn't easy to actually put into practice. That's when Jen said "It's not hard to do for your kids". Pastor Brian was taken aback and said that he'd never thought of it from that perspective. We all serve our kids and will do pretty much anything for them without expecting much,if anything in response so why can't we do it with our partner? If we could apply the same selfless attitude to our husbands/wives the way we do with our kids, our relationships would be much improved. Do you agree?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes, I so agree! It's just knowing how to do it!
ReplyDeleteRondell