The Difficult Realities of Marriage: Part 2
Marriage is not all sunny days. There are seasons. Ebbs and flows. Good times and bad times. Some times are the worst of times. The goal here is not to make you think that the fairytale of marriage is a myth, or impossibility. Marriage is the most beautiful thing God has given us. It is just really really hard work. There are difficult realities that every marriage faces. Yes, EVERY marriage faces. It is vital that you anticipate things and recognize that you have the tools to walk through these things when they show up. And they will show up. The current focus will be communication and expectations. These two really do belong together. Maybe even like peas and carrots. So let’s take a look at these two realities and how they can be navigated in marriage.
Communication
Communication in marriage is a deep, deep well. It is a lot like the switcher hub for your internal network. Everything that is going to happen, good or bad, has a whole lot to do with communication. The following is an oversimplification, but perhaps it is best to see communication in these core areas.
Subject
Okay, this area has been written on before. Four core areas/types/subjects of communication:
Informal - everyday simple conversations, check-ins, catch-ups, and all the normal day to day style things.
Organizational - action-oriented talks. Planning out who will take what/who where for what practice/event. Appointments and so on.
Challenging - required, but difficult at times, conversations to deal with troubles, or emotions/frustrations.
Intimate - forward looking conversations about the future together. Deeper time to learn more and more about each other.
Style
All of us have a manner in which we respond, and react, to others. We have a God-given motivational pattern. We also need to recognize that pattern has strengths AND weaknesses. Far too often we communicate out of the weakness.
Skew
The skew of communication is the sum total of all experiences, previous efforts, and responses to our attempts at communication. These things are a primordial soup of things from childhood, adolescence, and all the time of our relationship with our spouse. Don’t ignore it. Every person has it. How much have you come to recognize it? We can easily hold our spouse accountable for negative experiences from our childhood without even realizing it. It takes great love between a married couple to put our skew on the table and let it be challenged. It’s worth every bit of it too.
Expectations
Yup, it’s just like peas and carrots. Communication and expectations. These two realities somehow often find themselves linked together during the difficult moments of marriage. Actually, they are linked in every stage, area, and facet of marriage. More often than not there is frustration over unmet expectations, but the expectations were never really communicated. Think about that in your own relationship for a moment.
Can you really justify yourself being upset with your spouse because an expectation you never clearly communicated went unmet?
Expectations are everywhere in marriage. All areas are impacted by them. Both spouses have expectations that relate to things like taking the trash out, disciplining the kids, handling finances, and sexual intimacy in the marriage. Much like communication you have both brought a certain skew of expectations into your marriage. Someone had the primary responsibility of taking trash out while you were growing up. You watched expectations get modeled. You might have also seen them modeled poorly. Ask yourself two questions:
Do I really know what my expectations are?
Have I ever clearly communicated them to my spouse?
It should be added that as you define what your personal expectations are you should be identifying whether or not they are justifiable expectations. You can expect your husband to fly but if he isn’t Superman you are going to be disappointed. Thousands of marriages are dying a slow death because of unmet expectations that were never communicated. Don’t be one of those marriages. You can and should do better.
The next article will look at ways to facilitate communication between each other.