A marriage svithe

I know I've written about marriage before, but it's been on my mind the past couple of weeks because of some discussions I've been having with a friend from work.

Last night as I climbed into bed after finishing Harry Potter, I slipped in next to my already sleeping husband and thought, "Wow, I sure do love him."

My friends from work often commented on my marriage being perfect, wondering how I do it. A couple of them have been through bitter divorces and some are in patchy marriages. And then there are others who really seem to be happy in their marriages. So what really makes the difference? Why are some marriages so miserable why others seem to be perfect? While I can't answer for everyone, I can give a few things I like to keep in mind that help me feel content and happy in my marriage.

First of all, I think it's good to remember a quote that I used in a svithe post/ sacrament talk about happiness. "Happiness is not give to us in a package that we can just open up and consume. Nobody is ever happy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rather than thinking in terms of a day, we perhaps need to snatch happiness in little pieces, learning to recognize the element of happiness and then treasuring them while they last." (James E. Faust, "Our Search for Happiness,: Ensign, Oct. 2000, 2)

Happiness in marriage is no different really. It's not all peaches and cream. I'm not happy with him nor is he with me 24-7. We each have our moments of frustration. People aren't perfect which means that no marriage can be "perfect." (Unless you count perfection in this instance as a mutual desire to make sure the other person is happy while you both over look a lot of things, make compromises, and are quick to forgive and move on.) Marital bliss is not possible to maintain 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So we must treasure the happy moments, recognize and give praise when the other person is really trying, and feel love (or pray to feel love) even when it seems like they are giving us plenty of reasons not to love.

Probably the biggest block to marital happiness (in my mind) is selfishness. In an email to a friend this week, we were discussing about how hard it was for her to want to do nice things for her husband when he's so darned selfish. My response was steeped in my Leadership and Self-deception indoctrination from school...

The crazy thing about selfishness/selflessness is this: If someone else is selfish and self-centered, always "keeping score" as to how much they do, people tend to not want to help them. Then when other people don't help them, it "gives them a reason" (in their mind) to have a chip on their shoulder; that then reinforces their self-justification for their selfishness. "Since no one else will look out for me, I've got to look out for me!" They feel justified in their behavior.

So in your case, [your husband] can be selfish sometimes, right? So you don't want to dote on him or be overly nice, etc. But then he sees you as being the selfish one and that makes him feel justified for not helping you more. So when one person starts helping and loving unconditionally, stops keeping score, etc. the element of competition and contention starts to dissipate and the other person tends to soften.

The hardest part is that people often don't want to be the one to change first because they're afraid they'll be taken advantage of. And that may be the case for awhile, but I've found that if you give others a different person to respond to consistently, they'll start becoming a different person themselves. So it's really cyclical and both people play a part in the couple's happiness or unhappiness.

Now, this really is just scratching the surface, because you can get into behavior vs. way of being (among other things). Meaning you can act nice toward a person while maintaining resentful feelings. When that happens you often feel like you're being "the better person" and set yourself up as a martyr when the person doesn't respond in kind. That then perpetuates the negative cyclical interaction and you don't really obtain any sort of happiness from your "positive" behavior while you harbor the resentment.

One of my all time favorite and powerful talks is "The Challenge to Become" by Dallin H. Oaks given in the October conference of 2000. "...Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts—what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts—what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become."

To extend this thought to marriage, our spouses don't respond just to what we do. They respond to who we are--who we have become. Just as we need to become truly converted to being a disciple of Christ to obtain the blessings of heaven, we need to become converted to becoming a better and more loving spouse to obtain those treasured moments of marital happiness.

He continues in his talk, "Now is the time for each of us to work toward our personal conversion, toward becoming what our Heavenly Father desires us to become. As we do so, we should remember that our family relationships—even more than our Church callings—are the setting in which the most important part of that development can occur. The conversion we must achieve requires us to be a good husband and father or a good wife and mother. Being a successful Church leader is not enough. Exaltation is an eternal family experience, and it is our mortal family experiences that are best suited to prepare us for it."

So there it is. My take (today) on how to keep marriages alive and happy. It starts with us because who we are is the basis for all our interpersonal interaction and personal happiness.