Choose your Love, then Love your Choice.

A friend of mine once said, there are probably 10 things that will be perpetual problems that you will have no matter who you marry.  If you think the grass is greener being married to another person, think again.  I loved the comment in Dr. Gottman's book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work,  when he says, "marriages are successful to the degree that the problems you choose are ones you can cope with."  His example was profound to me. "Paul married Alice and Alice gets loud at parties and Paul, who is shy, hates that.  But if Paul had married Susan, he and Susan would have gotten into a fight before they even got to the party.  That's because Paul is always late and Susan hates to be kept waiting.  She would feel taken for granted which she is very sensitive about,  Paul would see her complaining about this as her attempt to dominate him, which he is very sensitive about.  If Paul had married Gail, they wouldn't have even gone to the party because they would still be upset about an argument they had the day before about Paul's not helping with the house work.  To Gail, when Paul does not help, she feels abandoned, which she is sensitive about, and to Paul, Gail's complaining is an attempt to at domination, which he is sensitive about."  And so it goes. 

A very wise man once said, "Choose your love and then love your choice.  We are all imperfect people.  We will not always agree with our spouse and they will do things that are very upsetting and irritating just as we sometimes do things that are very irritating and upsetting to them.  How do we maintain the love that once felt for each other in spite of these irritations.  

I was married for 33 years to my sweetheart before he passed away suddenly in December of last year.  We married young and when we were first married, I thought it was my job to change him.  As you can imagine, that didn't go over very well.  Luckily for both of us, I matured a little and came to realize that I needed to love him as he is, after all, who he is, was the man I fell in love with, not someone I expected him to become.  No one wants to feel like their spouse is continually trying to change them. We all need to feel validated and appreciated for who we are right at this very moment.  When we feel that love and validation, we are so much more likely accept the repair attempts or the benefit of the doubt or to give the repair attempts when we have conflicts. 

Once when I was having a difficult time with my mother in law, I came home from a particularly difficult family event and was ranting and raving about something that was said.  Even though the things that had aggravated me were, from my perception true, and my husband didn't try to defend his mother, he just said, "what do  you want me to do about it, shoot her?"  That was obviously not an option but by having him show me that there was nothing he could do to change his mother, he didn't need to defend her and disagree with me, he validated my feelings but totally defused the emotions around the incident.  It could have gone very differently, we could have each dug in, but it didn't and it was never a conflict between us and we have a sweet relationship with her.

How we choose to deal with the perpetual problems in our relationships determines whether those problems will create wedges that escalate or whether they can become funny little quirks that add love and humor to our relationships.  Love and humor are so much easier and more fun to live with than conflict.

I found this really great quote this week.