Only Idiots Trash Their Spouses

Julie Baumgardner is surprised by the fact that people attack their spouses to their friends. I first noticed it when Roseanne was a popular television show, but attacks, blameshifting, and failure to take responsibility been going on since marriage began:

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”  (Genesis 3:12)

It’s not my fault – the problem is my spouse! But only a self-centered, thoughtless idiot will trash their spouse to other people. That kind of behavior indicates phenomenally bad judgment on several levels:

• If your complaints are 100% accurate, what kind of idiot are you for marrying that person?  Should you be calling attention to that fact?
• Even if your complaints are 100% accurate, how do you think airing them to other people will solve the problem?
• If your complaints are not accurate, why are you telling falsehoods about your spouse?
• If you learned your spouse spoke about you that way, would you be hurt? If yes, why are you doing it?
• Will making other people think poorly of your spouse do anything to improve your marriage?

Let’s face it – talking down your spouse to other people is an attempt to elevate yourself in other people’s eyes (“look how long-suffering and patient poor Laura is!”) at the expense of your marriage. No temporary ego-boost is worth it.

This is not to say that we should never discuss difficulties with our marriages with anyone.  Even the best of marriages go through rough spots, and sometimes talking them out can help.  But if we don’t examine our motives and goals for those discussions, and carefully select with whom we share those problems, all we’re doing is adding fuel to the fire.  From the article -

Although it might help to know you’re not the only woman in the world experiencing a certain emotion, you only have to talk to your girlfriend once to make that determination. After that, you’re just wallowing in your helplessness.

The thing is that we’re rarely helpless where our marriages are concerned.  We just have give up the goal of changing the other person, and work on changing ourselves.  If you didn’t catch the movie “Fireproof” it’s well worth seeing.  When a man on the verge of divorce stopped worrying about having his own needs met, and focused on meeting his wife’s needs, her attitude changed toward him and their marriage.  That’s not just fiction with a happy ending.  Just in our circle we’ve seen “hopeless” marriages saved – one of a couple who separated for about a year, and now, ten years later, are still happily married, and another of a couple who was divorced for about five years, and remarried this month.  A couple we know was so vicious during their divorce process that the attorney representing the wife no longer handles divorces.  But the couple – fifteen years later – is still together and their marriage is solid.  My marriage has come right up to the brink, and mercifully, with Godly counseling, we backed away from the edge; now we are happier than we’ve ever been in spite of – or because of – the fact that our focus is not on achieving happiness.

Our senior pastor recently asked, “What if God doesn’t put you in a marriage to make you happy, but to make you holy?”  It’s something to think about.