Why Marriage is not for Dummies
Not for dummies.
Marriage is not for dummies. You don’t have to be a brain or a whiz to have a good marriage, but you must not be a dummie.
What is a dummie? A dummie is someone who is stupid, silent, or made to look like a real person. That’s why marriage is not for dummies. A good marriage includes people who are not stupid, not silent, and who are genuine.
Stupidity gets the best of all of us. Many times, our selfishness makes us look stupid. If we could only see how ridiculous we are or act in some of our marital spats, we would see how stupid we are. Selfishness is stupidity, and it’s wrong. A selfish person looks out for Number One, and it’s not his spouse.
A dummie marriage
The things we do that make us dummies include the following:
- selfishness – demanding our rights and our way
- refusal to listen to our spouse because we don’t want to hear or don’t care to understand
- dishonesty – practicing deceit in how we live and not being willing “to go there” in areas of struggle in marriage
- impatience and lack of commitment
An “original” marriage
A marriage that is healthy nixes those traits early on and keeps working toward improvement. That is because marriages face common conflicts – whether in communication or about in-laws, money matters, or sex.
An “original” marriage is guaranteed to have these qualities:
- unselfishness; sacrificing for the good and happiness of the other spouse in genuine care for the other
- honest communication – even when it is painful
- integrity in how we conduct ourselves – toward our spouse and toward others
- commitment – with a love that is slow to lose patience and is committed for the long haul
Is it because marriage is that hard, or because we don’t want to work that hard? We don’t want to admit that we are wrong. We don’t want to talk to our spouse about painful areas in our marriage, and we don’t want to pursue the right way to do marriage because it takes time, sweat, and sometimes tears.
When our spouse does not care or does not care to try, when our spouse is not honest about deep issues in our marriage, it is doubly difficult. It’s hard to have an original marriage when one of the partners lives in dummy mode. No matter what the other party does, we can continue to live in original mode instead of dummy mode. You are not responsible for your spouse; you are responsible for you. Be real; be honest and be genuine. You’ll be happier and more at peace, for sure.
Photo attribution goes to Pixabay.com
