“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).
“Please pray for my husband and me,” writes a friend, “that our disagreements and disappointments with each other will come to a halt and that we can finally become comfortable with each other.” Long ago, a pundit said that marriage is a condition in which a woman never gets what she expects and a man never expects what he gets. Nonetheless, it is true that seldom are the expectations of most people met in marriage. One woman commented, “Before we got married, he was ‘Mr. Right,’ and after we married, he was ‘Mr. Always Right.'”
Disagreements produce disappointments; the two breed off each other. Now, be honest with me. Would your marriage have been happier, more successful if you had only known how to deal with disappointments and disagreements? Most people would say, “Yes!” But the reality is not knowing how to deal with the irritation and quirks of human nature, which are usually selfishness disguised. We tend to suppress the disappointment until it becomes unbearable. Then, we explode, sometimes surprising even ourselves with the intensity of our emotions and feelings.
Yes, you know you shouldn’t expect the perfection in your mate that you don’t have yourself, but the irritations of life either build or have to be dealt with in such a manner that you stop cataloging them in the data bank of your memory.
So, how do you do it? Try the following guidelines, which are guaranteed to make a difference when you disagree.
Guideline #1: Feed the desire to have a closer relationship instead of feeding the desire to retaliate, to get even—an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. When you focus on the desire to eliminate the picky issues that create arguments and then disappointments, you rise above what pulls you apart. This means your desire for closeness and reconciliation is stronger than your disappointment with the person you married. It’s all part of maturity that goes beyond the sandlot mentality of two kids on a school playground.
Guideline #2: Be willing to pay the price of humility. This means your ego has to take a backseat to your humility, something that people are not willing to do. “What was the source of your disagreement?” I asked one couple who came for counseling, their marriage on the verge of collapse. Both stared at me with blank expressions. “I don’t know how this started,” said the young man, adding, “but once we started arguing, everything turned into a fight.”
Guideline #3: Understand that the benefits of a loving relationship are far greater than knowing you won the argument. You win the argument and lose the war.
Guideline #4: Follow the biblical pattern of conflict resolution. Frankly, that’s the only way disagreements and disappointments can be stopped before they build and build. God would have had a cruel sense of humor to tell us that a husband and wife are to come together in marriage “until death us do part” (as the old Episcopal marriage ceremony reads), knowing we will have disagreements, unless He gave us a way of dealing with those–which He did. That’s the key to going beyond disappointments and disagreements.
I once read of a rancher whose horses and mules were turned loose in the winter to forage for grass on the windswept prairie. When wolves would attack the horses, they would form a tightly knit circle, heads together, and kick the wolves that attempted to attack. The mules, however, would face the wolves, teeth bared, and also flail their hind feet, but they ended up kicking each other instead of the attackers. We often do the same thing, not understanding the damage we are doing to a marriage. Think about it.
Resource reading: Ephesians 4:17-21.
