Move Your Marriage Away From Discontentment
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Don’t confuse being discontent in your marriage with falling out of love. Being discontent means that there is an issue that can be worked on and fixed. Falling out of love means that you gave up on your marriage and chose not to love your partner. Discontentment stems from anger with your spouse. Anger usually stems from a build up of many little annoyances that grow into big annoyances.
Problem: He won’t take the garbage out unless I ask him to.
Thought: I’m not doing his laundry until he starts pitching in and taking out the trash.
Words: “Are you going to take out the trash or do I have to do it?”
Problem: She stays on her phone texting the majority of the evening.
Thought: “I’ll turn the football game on loud, that will get her attention”
Words: “ I’m just going to watch the game since your busy texting your friends.”
Problem: She leaves the sink full of dirty dishes every night.
Thought: “I’m not cleaning those dishes, it’s her job.”
Words: “Did it ever occur to you that germs grow on those dirty dishes!”?
Problem: He frequently stays late at work.
Thought: I’m not making dinner for him, he can make himself a sandwich.”
Words: None. Silent treatment
The thoughts that you dwell on eventually begin to control your words, your actions and your behavior. When you become critical and condemning of your spouse, what’s essentially happening in your mind is that you’re breaking down the respect you once had for him or her.
You hold the keys to whether you will continue to love and respect your spouse or not.
Take a look in the mirror. Be mindful of your own shortcomings, and failures. When you look at life through a clear lens, it will be easier for you to let go of your spouse’s past mistakes, shortcomings and failures.
Communicate. Secretly thinking revengeful thoughts or making snarky comments does not let your spouse know what is really wrong. You and your spouse need to find time to sit down and calmly discuss what is annoying you and what can be done to fix that. Examples:
“Honey I feel like you don’t care about our home when you don’t bother to take the garbage out.”
“Sweetie, I look forward to spending time with you in the evening and when you stay on the phone texting, I feel like you don’t want to spend time with me.”
Polish your spouse up. Start using encouraging words and actions. When you do this, your heart towards them will start to grow softer and the respect you once had for them will start to develop again.
This will help your spouse feel your respect and it will help you to dwell on the good in your spouse. If you continually do things like this, your spouse will start to move closer towards you and become more attentive towards you.
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