Marriage is tough, you enter into a union with your significant other. You share your ENTIRE life with them.
Now, many times our natural instinct is to compare ourselves to others. You compare yourself to acquaintances, friends, coworkers, and family. I found myself doing this with the most important person in my life… my husband.
In the midst of being a newlywed and having babies. Many times, I found myself jealous of my husband and even resentful. Let me ask a question to the moms out there. Have you ever stayed up all night with a newborn while your husband was sleeping? You can barely function while you are getting ready for work and your husband walks into the room and says, “Man, I’m so tired. I tossed and turned all night.” You feel this wave of emotions and you want to yell, but honestly, you’re just too tired. “Did he just say that?” you think. “How can he even say that when I was up with the baby all night?”
Another example is how people always make fun of men because they act so pitiful when they are sick. They might stay home from work, ask you to make them soup, and need all the rest they can get. While women are normally thought as the tough ones. Sure we might have a sinus infection, but we still manage to go to work, take care of the kids, clean the house etc.
Trust me this was me. I was having this huge pity party for myself in my head and I was starting to resent the person that I was supposed to love the most. One night I was praying about this and laid in silence. And all of a sudden I got “Stop Comparing Yourself to Him.” And it was like blinders were taken off of my eyes and I saw it in a different light. Maybe he is tired. Maybe he is sick. Does he not have the right to feel those things just because I think I might feel them more strongly? Maybe I can take being more tired than him and still function like somewhat of a human being and maybe he might really need 7 hours of sleep. We are not equal in a lot of respects. And just like that, everything clicked.
Many times in our marriage we feel like we are going, going, and going and doing 80% while our spouse does 20%. But we need to stop comparing ourselves to them. It isn’t a competition. We are in this together. We are a team. You’ll never be successful in your marriage unless you change the way you view your marriage. We need to humble ourselves in everything we do, to not only do it for God but for our families as well. I challenge you to not want your husband to change the way they think or feel but challenge yourself to change the way you view their actions, words, and feelings.
I would like to leave you with a quote from Tudie Rose. I will go to bed tonight and say this quote as my prayer. “Sometimes in my own marriage, I’ve been frustrated by my husband’s supposed selfishness, only to realize that it is me who needs the attitude adjustment. Once I begin to look inside myself at what is really going on. I can get back on the road of becoming the selfless person my partner deserves.”
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