Expectation #2: It’s important to be brutally honest with my husband.
Her starry-eyed assumption: I can say anything I want, how I want, to my husband because our love is unbreakable.
Reality: Without meaning to and without thinking our speech through, any of us is capable of sounding harsh or critical. But if we begin to do this knowingly, assuming “I love him and he loves me, so it’s okay to take a little bit of license because, you know, we’re married,” we’re going to rather quickly undermine any safety and transparency our spouse may have felt in our presence.
What to do: In our research with the happiest marriages, we saw a key nuance: the happiest spouses are honest … but never brutal.
Instead, they constantly make efforts to be kind. And so must we. Proverbs 15:4 speaks to this, and I especially appreciate how this reads in The Message: “Kind words heal and help. Cutting words wound and maim.” We would never want to wound or maim our spouse!
If you suspect this is an area to work on, read through The Kindness Challenge. It will transform the way you speak to—and speak about—your spouse. (Of those who did The 30-Day Kindness Challenge for a spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend, 89.3% reported improvement in their relationships!)
I’ll be back next week with two more unhelpful expectations that women sometimes place on the men in their lives. One of them might have to do with mind-reading. You won’t want to miss the simple adjustment you can make on that one.
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