Advice for Husband and Wives that Always Have to be Right
The following article is from our Q and A site. It is called “Do You Want to be Right, or Have a Great Marriage?”
As a husband or a wife, you may be totally correct in the assessment of your spouse’s character (or lack thereof), and your case against their negative behavior may be totally valid and accurate. Nevertheless, one thing is for sure, many a husband or wife has marched right over the edge of a relational cliff holding on to the fact that they are right instead of doing what it takes to encourage the type of change that needs to take place in a failing marriage.
I’m sure your spouse has issues. That’s probably why you are on our mailing list to begin with. From your perspective, they lack understanding, love, and the ability to truly meet your needs, however, at this point, these truths are probably nothing more than a given in your marriage. To be honest, if you are going to progress in your marriage, then there will be a part of you that will have to set aside your “rightness” and do what it takes to get your marriage moving in the right direction.
As a disgruntled spouse, you can spend a great deal of energy complaining about the issues with the other person, but there are really only a few ways to ensure that change in the other person has a greater chance of taking place. One of those ways is taking that same energy and working on yourself instead of trying to continually change the other half of the equation.
I have noticed that what we really need to do to succeed in life is not typically what our first inclinations are. That is, success in life and relationships really does not come natural to human beings. This, by the way, is why I have a job in the first place, isn’t it? Our initial impulses and tendencies tend to work against us rather than for us, and when we see negative behaviors in our spouse that, at times, “tick us off”, we tend to naturally point fingers, complain, and go negative. The problem is that these natural tendencies rarely produce forward progress in our marriage.
I have found that in marital relationships there are typically two types of people. You have those that will change no matter what the other person does and those that will only change if the other person changes first. The real question is which one are you?
You may be married to a person that will only change if you make the right changes. In fact, if this is the case, you will find that finger-pointing, complaining, negativity, sarcasm, coldness, and hostility will do very little to move your marriage forward. In reality, they may be waiting for you to make the first move. It’s not right, but it may just be the way it is, and ,once again, do you want to be right, or do you want your marriage to move forward?
To start making the appropriate changes, I would highly recommend our Audio Cd Series called How to Break the Cycle of Resentment and Anger in Your Marriage. To order, Click Here.
Watch this Short Video to See if Your Marriage May be Caught in the Cycle of Resentment and Anger
To Order our Audio Cd Series called How to Break the Cycle of Resentment and Anger in Your Marriage, Click Here.
