Accepting our Roles to Win at Marriage

To my ladies…….this piece of information is not desirable to hear. However, I’d be lying if I gave you some new age, feminist approving perspective.

Acknowledging our God-given role as a woman is a key to winning at marriage.

Nope, this just isn’t any religious propaganda you’ve heard from your grandmamma… This is the real stuff. The stuff that makes good marriages last.

A major role of wives is to be a help and support to husbands. You heard me! Because we were created to help them, we’re actually equipped to do it! We’ve been given the tools, the wisdom and the insight to help our husbands become their best.

When I just got married, I marveled at my husband’s amazing forgetfulness, his lack of follow-through on some great ideas he had and his cowardly demeanor. Furthermore, I lacked patience and kindness, constantly highlighting my planning abilities and multitasking strengths, my routines and my confidence in taking risks.

Now, I’ve repentantly come to appreciate the fact that my God-given skills and abilities were given to help my husband and NOT to use my giftings to bat him over the head or highlight his shortcomings in these areas. It’s like taking credit for something I didn’t earn.

Ladies…what value would we be to our husbands if we didn’t have anything to bring to the table?  Besides our bodies, we do possess skills that could help them, or greater, words that could encourage them. Men love to be complimented. You can never overcompliment a man. I love watching my husband blush when I dig deep for new material. Oh the power we as women have with our words!

Men by nature are more forgetful than women, in fact, science proves that women have consistently stronger short-term memory than men.

Coincidental or divine that our strengths would be different? When I think about the men I know complimenting their wives, I often remember them talking about their wives being smart. We probably aren’t super smart, but to men who usually have different strengths, we can appear amazing.

I’ve often seen my positive, encouraging words to my husband become like water to a dry plant, it makes him hold his head up high. I see confidence rising and a man who becomes taller and ready to change the world.

It’s sad when we use our words to criticise and diminish their masculinity in response to their short-comings. I am guilty of this a lot. God reminded me that when I do what I’m created to do, I reap the rewards. A man who is built up by his wife loves her, a cyclical effect. He is motivated to help me accomplish my passions, goals and becomes my biggest fan.

Quite often, I’ve seen insecure spouses tear down their partners out of insecurity, fearing that if their partners gained confidence, they will cheat or leave. How sad that the opposite is true! A man who is built up by his wife is more motivated to loyalty. I’ve even seen marriages when spouses cripple each other to self-doubt, convincing them that they are worthless and incapable in the hope that they will be controlled and submissive. This is not only ungodly and evil, it is a marriage controlled by fear that leaves both parties unfulfilled.

Oh if we’d only seek to build each other up with our words! We would reap the rewards of a good marriage!

Breaking toxic patterns

We are the products of our beliefs...

I’ve often heard people use the excuse of their upbringings to justify their negative tendencies or bad practices. While I can acknowledge that environment plays a major role in shaping us, I refuse to believe that we have to live that out for the rest of our lives.

Sometimes even our own fixation of hating a vice can ironically doom us into struggling with it ourselves.

Growing up, a close relative of mine would prefer to assume the worst-case scenario for everything! Unfortunately, my unhealthy fixation over hating that practice didn’t keep me in the clear of being guilty of it in the future. Only when my husband called out my constant negative, worst-case scenarios under the guise of “Contingency Planning”, had I realised that I too was choosing to live in fear instead of faith. I had become expert at seeing errors and critiquing. I found nice words for them like…editing, insight, revelation, restoring a brother, helping, etc. Simply put, I realised that issuing “a better way” was a need for my own self-affirmation. I was patting my own back. There I was convincing myself that I was being a good sister and wife with ungrateful reciprocation.

A friend once told me, if I am going to do or say anything, ask myself if it’s out of genuine love or out of fear. If it’s fear, don’t do it.

It continues to be a battle, I’m not out of the woods yet. But I know that acknowledging and surrendering my inability to change on my own to God is how I begin to break free. God now makes me aware and there is a lot of apologising involved….a lot. I often have to apologise to my husband before I can pray effectively.

Also, I need to keep forgiving the relative for the effects of the negativity, especially now that I’ve realised how easy it can become a habit.

I no longer can say, I do this because this person did it. I am an adult and I have to own my poor choices, EVERY time. I need to call it out for what it is, and quickly apologise, forgiving myself also. I choose to visualise a better me and keep pressing towards that goal with every belief that I will overcome fully one day.

I recommend writing on a piece of paper core values you believe to be good and bad. It could be about yourself in terms of what your successes or achievements should be, expectations of a potential spouse, and characteristics of a child. Then on an additional column, tick those things that are true and which are not. Ask yourself why you believe what you believe and who/what are the sources of these beliefs. It might be interesting to realise how subtly our upbringing may have influenced both good and bad beliefs.