Self-Assessment Can Change Your Marriage

As I have written before, respect shares the Real Marriage Wheel with love. We women love love. We dream of it long before we really understand it, and some of us never really quite get that far. We have storybook and Hollywood ideas about love, dreaming of men who like to talk for hours about subjects that interest us, who will watch love story films, look with starry eyes over our shoulders as we cook a romantic meal and listen attentively to every word we say during it ... and encourage us to continue. Men like that do exist, but my own particular man stands under the description as follows: will talk for hours about hockey and tell about every detail of a trip or work day, but please just give him highlights of my day ... he has listened to people all ... day ... long ... ugh (no offense); he likes action movies/will tolerate a chick flick from time to time but not in equal ratio; willingly chops vegetables, stirs sauces and serves beverages for a meal but no stars in eyes. I know this. I respect his differences, even though I hope they might adjust sometimes, and they do. About as often as he deigns to watch a chick flick.

We women do not do so well with giving our husbands respect, which is the half of the wheel we must keep moving. Respect is our C- on the report card, if grading our natural tendencies, and if, in fact we don't score substantially lower.  If you must know, I failed.


We assess the behavior of others, especially husbands, as if we have the responsibility of raising them,  and offer silent disrespect in return for their obvious ignorance. What goes on in our heads filters into our hearts, and from there infuses our actions and words.

Frankly, we women sit in a few columns on the chart of characteristics under the labels  "UNFORGIVING" and "JUDGMENTAL" and also "SPITEFUL/RUDE". More than that, we see ourselves as forgiving, accepting and nurturing/helpful.

In my own experience, we do begin the married life as innocently we see ourselves. We take apologies as they come from the rookie husband, knowing he is just out of the nest his parents harnessed him in for all those years, and we move forward (forgiving).  We overlook the personality traits and habits we do not like, and hope they will level out or disappear (accepting).  We like to guide and instruct, finding myriad opportunities to do so with our new husband, and he accepts our help willingly, having just escaped that nest and welcoming our guidance (nurturing/helpful).

And then we beat each of these into the ground.

The difficulty begins when our positive characteristics don't effect the hoped-for change in this man we married. We get ourselves worked up, wanting our own brand of positive change right now. We try to talk him into it (men aren't big on this lots of talk -- action, lady, action!). We try to share examples of other couples to highlight their successes and why can't we try that? Bad choice, comparison. Gets the dander up, and fast. We suggest, we request, we gently nudge. Men sense nagging.  Their radar cranks into action.  We're doomed.

This would be a good time for self-perception, which we don't have, or have so little it doesn't make a difference.  After dating and engagement, we feel quite golden, and while our new husband may have tarnished a bit, we still shine.  In our own eyes. We don't hear nagging, we hear uplifting words of hope and love. Men hear disrespect and yammer-yammer-yammer.

Here's a thought: show, don't tell.

Take action to show respect.  Make eye contact, smile, engage your brain and your heart, and the right words will begin to follow.  Still, you will have to pay close attention to what flows out and how it flows out of your mouth, but that's a human requirement.  Be one of the first on your block to actually do it (wry smile).

We women need to stop, drop our defenses and roll with self-assessment. Get out a mirror, replay the conversation with full reality turned on, see ourselves for the words we really say, the faces we really make and the actions we really take.  We must take the opportunity to pray for the insight into our own ways, the ones blind to us, and let God do what God does so well ... cleanse us of that awful behavior and thought process, and make us new.  We can return to that shiny, show-room model our husbands brought home from the wedding reception and enjoyed for many happy months or years.  A little spiffing up in various areas will do the trick.

When you deal honestly with yourself, thinking of words, actions and mannerisms that demonstrate  respect, you won't see many in yourself. We, in the society of women today, have lost a large portion of that decent, womanly trait. Certainly, many have never lost it, but they do not comprise the majority. Other women haven't lost it, but have hidden it behind tolerance for societal shifts. They don't stand firm in their conviction for living respectfully toward their husbands.  They bend and sway with the times, on a breeze.

Not standing firm leads to infiltration of other attitudes and actions. The world begins to enter the recesses of the mind, bringing with it a steady drip. If you don't fix the leaks in yourself, you find yourself swimming against the current. If you don't have the strength, you stop struggling and go with the flow.

Swim against the current! Strong women do not give in to whatever new notion comes down the pike. They also have enough strength to share, and to pull someone without the same strength along with them, helping and encouraging.

We have that kind of respect for ourselves, when the chips are down. It's now -- as the world consumes our men and siphons their self-respect by pouring on the disrespect -- that we must play our cards right. Poker faces, everyone! It's time to get down to the nitty gritty.

When you and God get together on this, you will feel amazingly different.  It may take some tweaking in your methods, and more than a few speed bumps in your path to assess yourself correctly, but if you listen to the still, small, insistent Spirit inside you, the results will astound you.  They will also make you feel happier than you have felt in a long, long time.

Thousands of women know the results first-hand, maybe more than thousands.  Worth it.

Totally worth it.