Marriage Strengthening Tip #11: Personality or Attitude, Part 3

I promised you in Part 2 that I would introduce you to the most signicant reason the Lord joined your two personalities in a dynamic duo.  Here it is: without your spouses' will at time countering your will, you are unlikely to learn that life "your way" is not  the life to the full that Jesus spoke of in John 10:10.  (Don't worry, He has his way of getting this done just fine for single folks as well.)  So, every time your spouse does things according to his/her personality, it is an opportunity to surrender your will to that blend of wills (or personalilties) that is always the higher road.  Scripture is sprinkled throughout with passages about how we needs to supercede me.  God designed marriage to grow you spiritually!  Nowhere does that happen more frequently or thoroughly than in the marriage relatioship (see Ephesians 5:21 for the secret).

Again, all of us tend to defautl to expecting the other to do more, if not most all, of the adapting.  Some of us particularly excel at this.  The happiest and healthiest marriages I have seen in three to four decades of working with couples are the ones where they both learn to accept their spouses' personality and work at adapting theirs to it. 

Paul Spasic

Director,

Marriage Mentors