For some reason, spouses like to think they can change each other (even in healthy marriages spouses sometimes think this). In fact some couples even enter into a marriage thinking this, often justifying their decision to marry based on this faulty (and dangerous!) assumption.
But anyone who’s been married for any length of time knows the truth—that we are only in control of our own actions and that we cannot change our spouse. But yet even knowing this intellectually, many of us live like we’re somehow able to will a real and lasting change of behavior in our spouse.
What foolishness!
Let’s get something straight right here…
You cannot control what your spouse does or thinks. (and there’s nothing you can do to change that!)…
So for goodness sake, stop stressing out and worrying about “your plan” to change your spouse… because it’s just not going to happen…
Okay?
I want you to feel the weight of that bolded statement above, too – this “cannot” is emphatic. i.e., there’s no possible way for you to change your spouse’s behavior.
And let me tell ‘ya, once you begin to understand this…it’s truly a liberating concept! No longer do you have to be so calculated in the way you act, looking for that specific desirable response…
You are who you are. Your spouse is who she is. This is how you both were designed. You’re not the same. You’re different. Yes, you may even be very different.
So what?
So what if your spouse has a certain attitude about gift giving than you do…
So what if your spouse would rather hike up a mountain to relax as opposed to watch TV…
So what if your spouse needs to call her mother every other day in order to be content…
Deal with it, my friend.
Recognize that these differences aren’t as big of a deal as you often make them out to be! Because let me tell you… your spouse has to deal with the very same differences… You’re always going to have differences in the way you think about certain things (after all one of you is a man and other is a woman…enough said!). But there’s no reason these differences need to become a stumbling block…
Before we go on to our next UMBA I want to say one more thing that is the converse of something I said earlier. Whereas as you cannot control what your spouse does or thinks, you definitely can control what you do and think!
While this may seem like an obvious point, I think it’s worth mentioning specifically because we sometimes tend to justify our behavior by making the statement that our spouse made us act a certain way, do a certain thing, etc. And while that can be a convenient excuse at times, it’s simply not true—each of us is in control of and responsible for what we say and do.