Embrace the “Otherness”

Hello Friends!

Alex and I had so much fun celebrating ABA’s first birthday and giving away the 31-day marriage challenge books, “Husband in Pursuit and Wife in Pursuit”, from Fierce Marriage. The Lord has been so good to us with this ministry. We are growing and excited. If you are reading this you also know that we have moved! We now have our own website to make room for all the things that are happening now and what is coming! As I look back at where we have come and I look forward to what lies ahead all I can say is “To God be all the glory”. There is no way we could have done any of this on our own. It is His capacity and His grace and His favor. We are just so thankful to get to be apart of it!

Embracing the Other

I am very excited about our blog this week. We are going to be talking about how to embrace the “otherness” in our spouse. If you have been married or really just in a relationship for more than a minute you have already realized that men and women are different. We see things differently. We process things differently. We react to the same stimuli differently. We are DIFFERENT! Although we all know that we are different these differences, especially in the construct of a marriage relationship, can at times drive us quite mad. We struggle to understand the “why” behind the “what”. It is in those moments of madness that we forget a very important truth.

God created us different on purpose for a purpose

I will go first and say that I get it. Yes, I know that men are different than women and that God did that own purpose. However, when Alex and I see things differently, that truth usually does not settle the frustration that is happening. In fact, it is compound frustration because Alex is in the same place I am. He does not understand why I do not see things the same way as he does. Here is the deal, if we can find some common ground with both of us embracing the “otherness” we can get a fuller picture of what is going on. I am not just talking about the times of disagreement here. I just talking about times when we were experience things differently because he is a man and I am a woman. Let me give you an example.

Alex is a great storyteller. It is one of the many things I love about him. He is a Sanguine so when he tells a story he pulls out all the stops. He will paint a picture for you so vividly that you will think that you were actually there. Here is the deal though, sometimes when he tells these stories, at least the ones that involve me, he will starting talking about a part and honestly I don’t remember it happening that way at all. I was literally there but he says things I genuinely never saw and heard. When I question it, he is certain it happened in the way he is explaining. Why does he do this? Because he is explaining the event from his point of view. He saw and experienced the same event I did but through a different lens which means he saw and heard things that I did not. The same is true when I start recounting an event. We see things and experience things differently because we are different.

Different Does Not Equal Wrong

Here is where married couples can hit a roadblock! After marriage, those differences really start to become noticeable and we equate that to mean one of us is wrong. So instead of embracing the “otherness” about our spouses we try and change them. We start listing the differences and speaking about them in derogatory ways. In most cases, the very things that at one time attracted us to each other are the very things we try to change after marriage. My Pastor put it this way in the last sermon he preached. “Opposites attracted until they are married then they repel.” Why is that? Why is the very thing that once drew us together is the very thing we now want to change?

Because marriage is under attack!

Discontentment and Unfulfilled Expectations

The enemy knows how powerful a couple is that is walking in unity with God and with each other. He knows the couple who is walking out the mission of marriage will change the world for the glory of God. He knows this couple, will not only have a happy marriage but they will mentor other couples to have the same. With this knowledge, he will do everything in his power to destroy the couple and marriage in general. Two of his greatest weapons are discontentment and expectations. He wants us to only see the things in our spouses we do not like. Then he wants us to spend all of our time trying to change them which will, in turn, make them miserable as well.

We live in a world that is always focused on the next best thing. We are all about upgrades and DIYs which is great but you can not lump marriage into those kinds of categories. Our spouse is not a project that is ours to “fix”. They are a child of God with strengths and gifts and weaknesses. They are men and women who are fully loved and fully seen by God and fully accepted for being who they are. Do they have shortcomings? Absolutely! Are there things that they need to work on? Oh yeah! However, I am not talking about those kinds of differences in this blog. I think the enemy has become very strategic in his attack. We have moved beyond trying to “fix” their shortcomings and are now trying to change the fundamental differences between men and women or at least trying to make them into our picture of what they should be.

Both sexes are guilty of this but in different ways. Women might try to change their husbands into their “girlfriends”. They want a man that is basically a woman. Stop looking at me like that ladies, you know I am right. We say we want a man, we do everything imaginable to get a man, then we spend all of our time trying to change him into a woman. We want him to do things we want to do, see things exactly as we see them, and feel all the feels.

Men might try to make their wives into the picture of what they think a wife should be based on the context they have seen modeled for them. This idea makes sense if you think about it. We learn things by seeing them modeled before us. Men see their mothers or their grandmothers being wives and think that is the normal behavior for every wife. In most cases, they do not communicate what their expectation of a wife is or at best they communicate it but in a way that makes their wife feel like they are falling short in some way.

Then add society (ahem, Christian community included) that is constantly shining a spotlight on our differences, and encouraging us to change our spouses into their idea of what they should be. Let’s flesh this out a little more.

In preparation for this blog, I reached out to some of my friends and my co-workers on the topic of “otherness”. I wanted to know if they thought both men and women went into marriage trying to change the other. From all of their answers, this was what I summarized. Generally speaking, women are more inclined to want to change their spouse. They are more likely to go into a relationship with some form of discontentment but they have an “I will change him” mentality. Men, again, generally speaking, are more inclined to come into their marriage with expectations based on their upbringing. They expect their wives to act like the women that they grew up with. For example, if a man had a mother or grandmother that cooked for their husbands every day he might expect that his wife will just love to cook and serve him and when she does not he does not understand. In both cases, if we are not careful we fall into a DIY mode and try to change the other person into our “idea” of right. Then typically what happens is we go outside of our relationship and talk about these discontentments and unfulfilled expectations with others who then validate them and encourage us with an “I would do something about that” statement. What follows next is both people doing everything in their power to change the other one!

Both parties are fighting a losing battle!

It’s time for a non-change!

I am sure you have heard the saying, “It is time for a change.” well let’s flip that here. When it comes to this subject it is time for a non-change. It is time to take a look at the man or woman that you married and fully embrace what makes them, them! I was reading a devotion this morning and ran across this quote.

One of the wildest and freest things we can do is to embrace our little personality quirks and believe that we were made that way on purpose, for the glory of God and the good of the kingdom

Never Too Much, Always Enough by Jess Connolly and Hayley Morgan

This is some beautiful truth that we need to believe not only for ourselves but also for the one that we chose to be our spouse. So how do we flip this script? How do we stop trying to change them and start embracing the “otherness” about them?

Don’t misunderstand…

Remember I said earlier, I am not talking about the big things that need to be dealt with and possibly changed in marriage. There are things that need to change. They need to be communicated and dealt with, however, that’s not the “otherness” I am talking about. There are also changes we can make simply because we know it would make our spouses happy. We can do and say things differently simply because we know this would have a positive impact on our marriage. If a change can have a positive impact I’m all about that! What I am talking about is the differences between a man and a woman. I’m talking about the differences that do not equal wrong and they do not warrant a DIY. I am talking about those little things that may get under our skin but truthfully are not big deals. Let’s stop trying to change the “otherness” and start embracing it instead. I am sure that if you do this you will start seeing not only a change in your marriage but a change in yourself as well. You will be happier and so will your spouse!

You can do this!

We are praying for you!

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