Action Step #6: Prioritize protecting your marriage (rather than yourself)
As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, defensiveness is an ugly D-word, and it’s often rooted in self-protection. However, the minute we said “I do,” we agreed to protect something bigger—our marriages. And as noted above, as long as you are in a relationship of goodwill, you may sometimes have to decide to let your guard down in order to protect your marriage first. You may sometimes have to forgive, even before the other person does. You may have to listen, even when you don’t want to. In short, you may have to do what you vowed to do—even if you don’t always feel like it!
Different seasons exert different pressures on this commitment. For example, I wrote in my recent series for empty nesters that we may be tempted to point out our spouse’s parenting mistakes when the kids move out and make choices that are not what we would have wanted. Or our spouse might be tempted to point out ours! Guess what’s going to creep in? Defensiveness. And if we’re not careful, this causes us to self-protect.
This dynamic is true in any season, and whether we have kids or not. It is also true way beyond marriage.
It is so easy to look at the speck in someone else’s eye rather than the log in our own. But doing so is to suggest that their sin is more serious than ours. None of us are perfect. But unless there is a true case of abuse or neglect, each of us can find ways to affirm what our spouse does right.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In