Let me get right to it.
We get married because we want someone to speak to those parts of us that feel weak, shattered, broken.
We get married because we are looking for someone to take us in and do the repair.
Because secretly, we want the other person to take care of us and take the project on.
Because we want them to make us happy. (And they might have been able to do that when you first met, I get it.)
We get married because we don’t feel whole and hope for the other to make us feel complete.
Fix the broken parts.
Heal the hurt.
This is where the ‘we got it all wrong’ part comes in.
That’s not their job. Simple as that.
If you have healing to do, you gotta do that work yourself. It’s not a project you can outsource.
You can’t get this stuff hired out.
[I heard Terry Real put it this way the first time years ago – cool, huh?]
Your spouse doesn’t have the capacity to be the happiness machine and the miracle maker for you both.
It’s true what they say – you are in charge of your own destiny. YOU. Not them.
They are in charge of theirs.
If you have an insecurity, that’s for you to deal with.
Maybe you got married because you want her to reassure you that I have value.
That you mean something.
That you deserve goodness and love.
BUT – Here’s the problem —
It’s not your spouse’s job – it’s for you to remind yourself to get out of the lies that you have been believing and living for who knows how long. (And I am not trying to minimize those lies or how you got to believing them.)
When you don’t take care of it, when you don’t grow yourself up, it’s putting too much on your spouse’s plate that they can’t handle.
And then being resentful when that doesn’t happen.
When they don’t deliver – which is most of the time.
And they don’t deliver because they can’t. (Not because they might not want to sometimes)
We get married because we want to GET.
We want to get the love, the care, the attention out of marriage. We want to get it and have it all the time.
What happened to giving?
We moved from being willing and eager to be the one that loves, the one that serves, the one that satisfies – to I want to be on the receiving end of that.
You know what they call this in the in the business world?
Terrible Marketing.
I want this from you, and then this and then this and then I don’t know what else that’s also super ridiculous, and then – maybe – we look at it from the other angle to say – now, what did you say I could do for you?
You would never sell anything ever.
Yet this has become the game we play in our marriages.
It’s more common a practice than you realize.
Here’s my requirements, here’s my laundry list of asks, and I will wait to give something to you until I see at least 90% of these completed.
What about giving? What about – I wanted to marry you not because I was hoping you were going to fill all these holes for me. But – I married you because I wanted to be able to say – what can I do for YOU? How can I serve YOU? How can I be generous with YOU?
And start with that.
We gotta flip the script.
Don’t wait until you get a ‘report’ that’s worth rewarding.
Don’t wait until there isn’t a single speck of dust to be found.
Start with that.
Yes, you — start with being willing to serve and care. I need someone to help start the movement.
We gotta flip it on its head.
Marriages are in desperate shape, and I’d argue this is the biggest demise.
We want to get.
And we are not very willing to give.
The kind of stingy that we’ve become would have been unheard of a hundred years ago.
This would have never gotten a pass then.
How have we gotten it into our heads that it would now?
Are you interested in creating a different marriage for you and your spouse?
This – This is where it starts.
With being generous.
With getting out of this ‘we got it all wrong’ paradigm.
If you both keep waiting for the other to take the first step, you’re gonna be waiting a LONG time.
You don’t want to plan that game.
If you know someone who needs to hear this, help them out and share it with them. I’d be grateful and I have a feeling they would be, too.
