Some excerpts from the book "You're Not What I Expected" written by Polly Young-Elsendrath:
"If you want to understand, and not silence and inhibit another person, in order to befriend that person, we have to allow that person's claims and statements to overtake our prejudice.
"Intimacy is an achievement of hard work and understanding another from that person's point of view, while maintaining one's own.
"The darkness of illusionment follows the joys of early friendship and romance.
"A mature form of dependence is the ideal outcome of healthy development.
"Anger - a signal that an injustice or an unfairness has been (perceived to be) done.
"Aggression - an impulse to hurt, destroy or diminish.
"Rage - (hot or cold) - is fury and violence that is purely and simply destructive.
"We need to be especially conscious that we do not wound in ways we were wounded.
"Most of the time, expressing anger makes people angrier, solidifies an angry attitude, and establishes a hostile habit. If you keep quiet about momentary irritations and distract yourself with pleasant activity until your fury simmers down, chances are you will feel better, and feel better faster, than if you let yourself go in a shouting match.
"The impulsive expression of aggressive, hateful feelings is never good for increasing intimacy.
"In the gap between the imagined and the actual, people grow."
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
In Your Heart
"No matter what's in your heart, people only see how you behave. God can see our heart... the world can only see how we behave."
I didn't write down where I got this from.
In marriage loving behaviour is so important!
And also... our own cleansing of our 'inner vessel' (thoughts and feelings) needs constantly to be happening... otherwise one day our uncleansed (putrid and toxic) 'inner vessel' WILL explode out, and frequently when we least want it to... This massive explosion does a huge lot of damage in our relationship. It can cancel out the good behaviour we have 'put on' over days and months and years.
(To the degree your spouse is a SAINT they can and will choose to look and live past less and less frequent and less and less intense toxic explosions - Good and Godly people know how to forgive. BECOME one of the increasingly Good and Godly ones in your relationship with your spouse. Thank God every day if you are married to a Good and Godly person of any degree. Encourage their growth in these respects. Nurture your own growth in Goodness and Godliness.)
The effect of an explosion will be very hard to repair in the relationship unless constant progress has been seen and experienced by your spouse in their daily relationship with you. If they are not growing themselves... life will be lonely and painful for you, and also for your spouse, whether you formally, or informally, divorce.
Learn personal skills, and nurturing, cultivating-the-growth-of-another, skills. Force of any shade, shape or form will definitely not work.
Learn to want to know how to be peacefully and successfully married - there are laws that govern peaceful and harmonious living.
Prevention is definitely more comfortable, and less 'costly', than cure.
Maintenance takes remembering, talking to someone savvy when necessary, and doing what needs doing (whether you want to or not - your marriage vehicle needs what it needs - not what you wish or hope it needs). All maintenance will need to be 'paid' for in some form of currency.
Maintenance is definitely more worth-while, less expensive, and less inconvenient than repair after a gradual or sudden failure to function.
Break-downs are usually unexpected, and definitely costly, needing to be paid for in various forms of currency - breakdowns may even be unrepairable.
Breakdowns in your marriage are definitely not wanted unless you intend for your marriage to end. If your spouse is heading for an intended breakdown and that's not what you want, you definitely want to know soon that he/she is heading in that direction - the situation might or might not still be reversible.
Ignorance in your marriage is definitely not bliss - you deliberately need to know all you can know at any given time about yourself, your special and unique marriage partner; and your unique and irreplaceable "marriage vehicle."
Sobering. Worthwhile work of a whole life.
Join me in living actively and pro-actively as a marriage partner.
I didn't write down where I got this from.
In marriage loving behaviour is so important!
And also... our own cleansing of our 'inner vessel' (thoughts and feelings) needs constantly to be happening... otherwise one day our uncleansed (putrid and toxic) 'inner vessel' WILL explode out, and frequently when we least want it to... This massive explosion does a huge lot of damage in our relationship. It can cancel out the good behaviour we have 'put on' over days and months and years.
(To the degree your spouse is a SAINT they can and will choose to look and live past less and less frequent and less and less intense toxic explosions - Good and Godly people know how to forgive. BECOME one of the increasingly Good and Godly ones in your relationship with your spouse. Thank God every day if you are married to a Good and Godly person of any degree. Encourage their growth in these respects. Nurture your own growth in Goodness and Godliness.)
The effect of an explosion will be very hard to repair in the relationship unless constant progress has been seen and experienced by your spouse in their daily relationship with you. If they are not growing themselves... life will be lonely and painful for you, and also for your spouse, whether you formally, or informally, divorce.
Learn personal skills, and nurturing, cultivating-the-growth-of-another, skills. Force of any shade, shape or form will definitely not work.
Learn to want to know how to be peacefully and successfully married - there are laws that govern peaceful and harmonious living.
Prevention is definitely more comfortable, and less 'costly', than cure.
Maintenance takes remembering, talking to someone savvy when necessary, and doing what needs doing (whether you want to or not - your marriage vehicle needs what it needs - not what you wish or hope it needs). All maintenance will need to be 'paid' for in some form of currency.
Maintenance is definitely more worth-while, less expensive, and less inconvenient than repair after a gradual or sudden failure to function.
Break-downs are usually unexpected, and definitely costly, needing to be paid for in various forms of currency - breakdowns may even be unrepairable.
Breakdowns in your marriage are definitely not wanted unless you intend for your marriage to end. If your spouse is heading for an intended breakdown and that's not what you want, you definitely want to know soon that he/she is heading in that direction - the situation might or might not still be reversible.
Ignorance in your marriage is definitely not bliss - you deliberately need to know all you can know at any given time about yourself, your special and unique marriage partner; and your unique and irreplaceable "marriage vehicle."
Sobering. Worthwhile work of a whole life.
Join me in living actively and pro-actively as a marriage partner.
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