How to ELEVATE your RELATIONSHIP

Do you ever feel like you are arguing over the same things again and again? Do you ever wonder when you should throw in the towel? Are there issues in your relationship that never seem to disappear? Do you yell, argue, and then wonder if other people are more civilized when they argue??

Relationships are hard. Not a little bit hard, not just a little frustrating at times, they are pretty inherently flawed. No matter what. Do you wonder why?

My hope and prayer is that I can share a 3-5 things that will actually help take your relationship to a higher level. A higher level of love, intimacy, and communication. While my relationship has VASTLY improved, it is far from perfect. With some collective wisdom, maybe this is just a conversation starter. Certainly not a standard on how to go about having a good relationship---just an insight about how I now think about things perhaps in a way that I didn’t before and at the end, I will share the most life changing relationship advice I have learned.

This brings me to my first point. Relationships have much to do with PERSPECTIVE. Your perspective. My perspective. Our chosen perspective. Yes—we choose it. The good news is that all of the parts of the relationship that we get to choose is the part we have control over. There is plenty that we do NOT have control over, but plenty that we do. Perspective is one of them.
For me, I try to maintain a perspective that is largely THANKFUL. I am thankful my spouse has a job. I am thankful my spouse is a good dad. I am thankful he loves me. There are so many people who start to think the grass is greener. They ‘covet their neighbor’s wife’ or husband. Or maybe they just fantasize about living without the one they were given. This is no way to live. This is no way to create the type of harmony you may wish for in your life, in your home. Perspective is sometimes seeing the bigger picture. What is going on with your spouse? Why are they down? What has eaten away at their self-worth? What are we really after? How have you contributed to their self-centeredness? I have been married long enough to see some fruits of our labor. Mostly, we have the hope in a future together. We see where we were relative to now and where God has led us. Don’t poison the now with the past. Let it go---all of it. If you are in it for the long haul, make your burden lighter by letting go of the past. I knew a couple married 37 years who divorced because she could not let go of the past. She was one bitter old lady. The divorce only gave her another reason to be bitter.

Sometimes it’s seeing the smaller picture. You know, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe he/she snapped at you and immediately regretted it. Maybe she had a bad day. Maybe his boss was riding his butt all day. There are some things you can overlook and have grace for. Stop pointing the finger at your spouse and realize that you, too, are not all that and a box of cherries. Maybe the fact that they are more anal about things keeps your finances in order or your house neat and clean. Don't expect them to be like you....Allow them to have a bad day, or a bad week.

The next word here is COMPASSION. I truly believe that marriage can teach you to have an enormous amount of compassion. If you are open to it, you can find compassion for person you are with at any given point. Their flaws, their mistakes, their shortcomings, and all of the legitimate reasons you may have for being disappointed with them may be serving a purpose in your life---to grow your compassion. This comes in part, by being humble enough to see your own flaws and shortcomings. For if you can see how many errors you make, how many times you miss your own blind spot, how often you dismiss, undermine, devalue the person you are with-----You can then more easily forgive them for their imperfections. Always work to take the log out of your own eye. Assume you have logs in your eye, because you do.

Next is a simple idea. John Gray, the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus has some talks he gives on Youtube. When I was really struggling, I was looking for advice and leaving no stone unturned. He said something simple that stuck with me and helped me change my perspective quite dramatically. I will have to paraphrase, but he said that relationship are not there to make you HAPPY. They are there to make you HAPPIER. He said your job is to make yourself HAPPY, and when you are in a relationship, it will make you happier. That is it. So start taking the pressure off of your significant other to make you happy. You make yourself happy. Then, the way I see it, you will at least be HAPPY. It’s icing on the cake if you are ‘happier’ in your relationship. And don’t give them permission to ‘make you miserable’.

This all comes by way of some good advice I was given in the form of a book: The Four Agreements. I won’t expand on all four—although they are all useful, but the one that stuck out to me in my troubled times was “Don’t take anything personally”. It explains eloquentlythat whatever comes out of the mouth of someone else is a result of their perspective. In the case of my relationship, when I was being belittled and put down, I had to understand that it really had very little to do with me. The Bible is clear on this. “Out of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Luke 6:45 or put another way, ‘For his mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart.’ I learned to ‘hear’ people differently. If they were a complainer, I learned to see that it was out of their own desolate heart, certainly not from a place of abundance. I started to hear myself better and wonder why I said things that sounded wounded, yearning, or desperate. I started to have more compassion for the emptiness of his heart and remove myself emotionally from the venom that was spewed.

If you are reading this far because something has resonated with you, I am glad. It is my sincere hope that one little seed of wisdom you might get from this might grow and flourish in your life, as it has mine. Now for the most life changing discovery I made: I learned how to have boundaries. Boundaries are the lines that define us and help us ‘keep evil out and good in’. The book, ‘Boundaries’ by Cloud and Townsend was probably the most life changing book I have ever read. When you have no boundaries, you allow people to take advantage of you and you feel used or blindsided. I was the type that meshed with my significant other to the point that I lost so much of my identity. I felt ‘mean’ or ‘guilty’ when I said “NO” and then compromised myself to keep the peace. Boundaries have become the way that I obey God’s word guilt-free by guarding my heart. “Above all else, guard your heart.” Proverbs 4:23. In the first chapter or two of the book, they said essentially that children raised by controlling parents do not develop boundaries and are then handicapped for life. It felt like an arrow had jumped out of the book, straight to my heart. That was me. My parents controlled my every move until I was 'transferred' to a spouse at the tender age of 18 who also wanted to control me through a different type of control called manipulation. Not until I matured did I understand this and started making different choices. Including divorce. Although I do not ‘claim’ to be handicapped for life because I believe in the significant healing work of the Word in my life, I am careful of the many blind spots I still have. I continually read Cloud and Townsend’s books on boundaries and re-read them, applying them to my life.

Few people who know me understand the painful journey it took for me to learn these lessons. Not to sound cliché but only by God’s amazing grace in my life have my tears been turning to tears of mostly joy. He promises in His word to exchange ‘Beauty for Ashes’ and I think there is still some cleanup going on. I had made a pretty big mess.