Let Your Spouse Be Who They Are

My friends Craig and Ashley are happy to share what works in their marriage. They have been married over a year and a half. Ashley comments:

"My husband Craig thanks me all the time for "letting him be him". This approach helps us be happy. Early in our relationship when I would make cookies or muffins, as soon as the timer would beep Craig would rush over to the oven with me and as I was pulling out the tray he would grab one of the treats... I would get so frustrated telling him he needed to wait so I could see which one was ugliest and have him take that one in case I was giving the treats away to family or friends. Wow, pretty rude of me. My husband deserves the best, he deserves to get first pick. I changed my way of thinking and grew to love the fact that he wanted one of my baked goods as soon as it came out of the oven! Sometimes now I even tell him, I'm about to get the tray out of the oven, come pick one. This is an example of me letting him be him, letting him live true to himself and not trying to boss him around."

Ryan laughed after reading this. He said maybe I should just let you eat the cooked meat straight out of the frying pan from now on. I said, "Yes, I think that's a great idea!"
We are talking about letting your spouse be who they are in the little things that really don't matter in the end. We are not talking about things that are inherently right or wrong. 

So, how can you let your spouse be who they are?

Science behind a happy relationship

Courtesy of Happify:

Study: two-parent families improve economic mobility

What is the most important factor blocking social mobility in the US? 
It could be single parents, not economic inequality.
 
As reported by New Scientist:

An important new Harvard study that looks at the best community data on [economic] mobility in America – released this past weekend – suggests a cause that progressives may find discomforting. ...

A lot of research – including new research from the Brookings Institution – has shown us that kids are more likely to climb the income ladder when they are raised by two, married parents. But this is the first study to show that lower-income kids from both single and married-parent families are more likely to succeed if they hail from a community with lots of two-parent families. ...

Economic inequality was not a statistically significant predictor of absolute or relative mobility.

How about them apples?

I (Ryan) am the consummate square. Straight lines, rulers, graph paper, plaid shirts. Engineer. If this picture were taken while we were dating, you might be able to guess which apple I cut and which one Leah cut:

And you'd probably be wrong.

I grew up carefully slicing apples as shown on the right: straight down the center, with an intricate cut to remove the stem and seeds from each quarter. If you're counting knife operations, it works out to around 18.

On the left, we have Leah's apple. Four cuts and it's ready to eat. Easy to make thin slices out of, too. Just goes to show. Even an engineer can learn something from his wife about straight lines and efficiency. I never would have guessed that when we got married.

Note: No apples were wasted in the making of this post.

Look at Yourself Before Judging

When we first got married, I was looking disgustedly at our cluttered bathroom counter. I saw Ryan's shaver, his hair gel and his comb all left out instead of being put away. I was getting mad at Ryan and then I stopped for a second and looked at the bathroom counter again. I saw my hairbrush, my ponytail holders, my curling iron...and then realized that my list went on and on. Almost all the mess on the counter was mine. I quickly put ALL of OUR stuff away and moved on. I was grateful that I hadn't embarrassed myself by telling him he was leaving out too much stuff. Sometimes we need to just focus on ourselves first when there's a "messy" problem.

The importance of being right

Before starting that argument, ask yourself one question:

Is it more important to be right, or to be married?

Fire and Ice

We studied the words from this talk before we got married. It helped us to really understand the importance of sexual purity before and within marriage.  I'll share a tiny bit of his talk. It's worth a full read or making time for the video.


Click here for full text

"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,
From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. by Robert Frost"

"Why is this matter of sexual relationships so severe that fire is almost always the metaphor, with passion pictured vividly in flames? What is there in the potentially hurtful heat of this that leaves one's soul- or perhaps the whole world, according to Frost- destroyed, if that flame is left unchecked and those passions unrestrained?"

Holland goes on to state that "God's greatest concerns regarding mortality are how one gets into this world and how one gets out of it." He notes that people are generally quite responsible and cautious when it comes to the taking of life, but the same cannot be said of the giving of life.