Taking Responsibility For Marriage

Something I can hardly stand to read are the thoughts of married men who hate their wives and feel miserable, powerless, and trapped in their marriages. "I can't wait until I'm dead." Oh, brother.  People of any gender feeling miserable and powerless tends to annoy me, but men especially will push my buttons when they're in this state. I kid you not, I want to pitch things at their head.

So what do all these miserable married men have in common? They totally blame their wives. They blame society, they blame the very nature of women, and they certainly blame the horrid woman they're married too.

And in the process they hand all their power away! See, the problem with blaming somebody else is that you're telling yourself you have no power and no control over the situation, because it is now all about the other person.

The thing about blaming yourself, about believing you are fully accountable for the state of your marriage, is that it puts the whole situation back under your control. People don't like to do this, pride I suppose. Just typing that word "blame," I am aware of all the negative connotations. Heaven forbid we ever "blame" ourselves for anything. It's always someone elses fault. Just think, "blame equals power and strength," and perhaps it will be an easier pill to swallow. Like it or not, that's what leadership is all about. The buck stops here. We don't blame the privates, we blame the officers.

Even if you are married to the most awful person ever, blaming them adds to THEIR power and strength. If your spouse is truly a jerk, the last thing you want to do is hand them more power.

 

Now, flip this around, to the female side of things, when I was first married I really was a jerk. It was pretty much all about me, all of the time, and I wanted control. I did not empathize with my husband at all. I thought men were jerks, marriage was miserable, and I certainly blamed him for just about everything I possibly could. Honestly, I have no idea how he put up with me, but he did.

He didn't blame me, even when I was to blame.

What happened is I finally realized I was totally responsible for how happy or miserable my marriage was going to be. I had to humble myself to the possibility that it may be my fault. It was humbling but it was also unbelievably empowering. That's an interesting paradox within the framework of submission, but that is what strength in weakness looks like. Surrender all and you become incredibly powerful.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 scripture speaks to this, "power is perfected in weakness" and "for when I am weak, then I am strong."

It's a bit amusing, lots of men on the internet complain that women today are not submissive enough and I just want to laugh. Submissive women are powerful women, so be careful what you wish for.  Read the book, it explains everything. There's this garden and these two naked people.... 

Also, those words Paul is speaking in Corinthians, those are words for men. Strength in weakness, it's not just for girls....

Anyway, men and women are not that different in regards to the amount of control and influence we have over our own relationships. It is tempting to blame the other person, but that is a position of weakness, devoid of all power. One problem we're seeing today is that people expect their spouse to make them happy and there is very little understanding of the nature of sacrificial love. When somebody fails to make us happy, there is an ugly amount of Ex-hate, man-hate, woman-hate, spouse-hate, which just fuels the whole deception and makes the world an unhappy place to live.

This is an issue that runs close to my heart because marriage rates are on the decline, divorce is rampant, and there are miserable people on my planet, disturbing my peace.