SML #183 - anniversary question
LESSONS LEARNED
Our 53rd anniversary was last week.
On the way home after dinner I asked her,
“What do you know now that you wish you’d known then. Something that if you’d known then, it would have made your life better?”
“It’s going to be spiritual,” she said. As if I thought that didn’t count.
“I wish I’d trusted Jesus more. I worried about things I didn’t have any control over. If someone wants to do something, or act some way they shouldn’t, that’s on them.”
She said “someone.”
She didn’t say it was me. But I did relate it to marriage when I asked her, and I’m the only husband she’s ever had . . . 😊
I respect that answer because no one needs to get flustered by “someone else’s” dumbness.
She and I used to have a lot of head-bumpings and arguments over each of us playing the dumbness role and the flustered role.
You can’t control the other person. You only have a say in yourself and how you respond.
Then I answered the question -
“I wish I’d known then that I was arrogant and insensitive.”
She was quiet for a second. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I thought I was right all the time. It may not have come across as cocky and arrogant, but I just subtly thought I was right about everything.”
I said, “I didn’t realize how right you were about so many things. I wasn’t sensitive to you or to how I came across.”
It felt like she heard it and it meant something to her..
I told her I’d been trying to make it up to her ever since.
“No we can’t do that,” she said. “We all have ways where we mess up and try to be better.”
I think one of the most surprising things of being in my 70’s is realizing how much I thought I was right but wasn’t.
And realizing how much “righter” she’s been than I ever thought.
Maybe this is a common human universal in some of us.
Maybe it’s easy to go through life thinking you’re more right than you are. I can’t be the only one, can I?
I do think some of us really can go through all of life never realizing how high we actually mistakenly think of ourselves.
I know first-hand it’s easy to think the other person has issues with needing to be right, and to think you don’t have those issues.
Thinking you’re probably right all the time ends up causing painful things in your relationship.
Pain is designed to cause us to pay attention because we don’t like the pain.
I think the pain, and wanting to be the kind of person who follows Jesus, led to a little more humility in me.
Which helped me see more of the truth about myself.
Slowly, I stopped thinking she needed to see and think different (meaning more like I see and think).
I stopped thinking her opinions needed to be different. Or that her behavior or reactions needed to be different.
I started thinking she gets to be who she is. (We’re not talking about letting people be jerks or bad-faith manipulators.)
I started thinking “ Who the heck am I to think I know how she should be? Am I Mr. Perfect?”
And the more I let her be who she is without me fighting it, the more I would see how right and smart she often was.
And the more I “let” her be who she is, the more I thought she was kinda awesome.
I had been missing it.
She didn’t change. I changed.
I wish I’d known then what I know now.
WORTH REPEATING
“We spend countless hours making up our minds about others. An unceasing exchange of opinions about people keeps us distracted and allows us to ignore the truth that we ourselves are the first ones who need a change of heart and probably the only ones whose hearts we indeed can change.” - Henri Nouwen
WORTH TRYING
I can realize that some things are just my opinion vs. hers. Most things are probably just a personality difference or lifestyle preference,
Some of those matter, some don't so much. So I could ask myself a few questions to think how much this thing we’re different in might matter to me -
Is this getting in the way of the flow of love?
Is this making our relationship better?
Is this making my life better?
If I cared less about this, would it make life better or worse?
Maybe it’s not that big of a deal.
And if I say to myself, “Yeah but they still shouldn’t be that way!” am I making my life better or worse?
This doesn’t mean differences of opinions and preferences don’t matter.
It’s just to help discern which ones matter, and which ones don’t so much.
Thank you for reading!
"The LORD is near to all who call on him in truth." - King David
You matter
Gary
JUST IN CASE . . .
The Simpler Marriage Instagram is a bite-size on-the-go version of the kinds of things you get in this letter. Not the exact same content, but the same approach. If you’re on IG, you can see and follow HERE.
If you find the tone or attitude in these letters helpful, I wrote A Family Shaped by Grace from the same posture you get here. Everything in it applies to marriage, but it shows how it also applies to kids, grown kids, in-laws, etc. Here it is.