Can I clear up something for those that believe marriage is a waste of time? For those that say, “I’m never getting married,” because they believe all of their married friends are unhappy. Can I give you another perspective? Can I give you all something to chew on?

You know how we say Facebook and Instagram lives and relationships are FAKE. We believe they are fake because we know these people aren’t happy all the time but they love to post lovie dovie posts about their spouses even though they just got into a fight, spouse is cheating, or they just told you about wanting a divorce.

Well guess what else? Most of the time, well I’m willing to bet, the majority of the time, 90% of the time, we are only dishing out the complaints about our spouses! Like for real, who needs to vent about their spouse making them feel special or the best sex of their life with their spouse the night before? No one. Absolutely no one.

But we do need someone to vent about our husbands being stupid, lazy, or assholes. We definitely need to get that out of our systems. LOL. We do this because we want to hear a similar story or at least be validated that our feelings are real or just a listening ear. Half the time, we don’t really want to leave our spouses. We just want to go upside their heads a few times with our fists. Now this I can confess to. I won’t lie, there are times I just want to square up with James and get it over it. Sigh

Just to reiterate, who I’m not talking about are those in tumultuous situations of abuse of any form, drug use, outside relationships continuing, etc. With the latter, I’m referring to those situations where the spouse has a full fledge outside relationship with a person that has been going on for years. Listen…I’m not speaking of anything I’ve made up. I know situations like this from an up close view. In such situations, often times, the victimized spouse knows of the other woman or the other man.

Any-who, with those situations to the side, there are the rest of us just going through and trying to survive the day-to-day issues or conflicts. These are the ones we complain about to everybody that is listening. We complain to our friends. We give the business to our co-workers seated next to us, the coworker we meet in the break rooms, and the ones from the other building that visit us from time to time. We complain to our in-laws, cousins, mailman, and the lady at the MAC counter. And some of us spew our issues on social media for all to view.

Here is the catch. When we only complain about our spouses and never share their good habits, what impression does this leave for a single person? When the majority of us behave in this way, it paints a picture to the single person that ALL of us are unhappy in our marriages. It gives them a distorted view of what it truly means to be married.

Those onlookers miss how we have each other’s back, miss the deep talks we have and the oh so many special moments we share. They miss out on the makeup sex or the sincere apology we get and the look in their eyes when they know they’ve been acting a butthole. They miss the companionship we share, the friend that is always there, the laughter, the play fights, and the HELP we render to each other.

I am guilty of this too. When my husband gets on my nerves, I would vent too. I would bad mouth him to my friends and close co-workers. And if that person I’m letting it out to is married too, we have a field day baby! We share complaints back and forth and back and forth. It’s so therapeutic but at the end of all of these spouse roasting sessions, I feel better. I can go on and fight another day.

As many of you know, I’ve complained sideways about my husband coming home and chilling in the evenings and not helping with housework (I.e. cooking, cleaning, or washing those darn dishes). But the part I never shared (until I had this break through during our retreat this past summer…shameless plug), was that even though he didn’t do much in the evenings, my husband has a perfect attendance with our kids’ morning routines.

Before school, he wakes them up on time, makes them a hot breakfast, fixes their lunches, makes sure they get dressed properly and takes them to the bus stop. About a month ago, my husband had to be at work super early to assist with an event at work. Before that, I had never seen the bus stop. And then we had a couple weather delay starts and since I go to work later than he does, I chose to stay back and get the kids on the bus. Still…their lunches were fixed and he left me with instructions on completing their routines. He…him…that man left me with instructions. Yes girl! He did.

At the retreat, when I mentioned this scenario during one of our “ladies only” sessions, most (if not all) of the women were floored at what James did. They high-fived me and expressed how lucky I was. Lucky??? Really? I had never looked at it like that before. Wow. All this time, he was doing something considered ‘special’ to someone else, but all this time it was just a norm in my household. But I had missed that totally.

So guess what…

I’m willing to bet that if you (yes you…wife or husband) are missing out on something special going on under your roof. Take a moment and think about it. There is something you’ve gotten so used to your spouse doing for you that you’ve forgotten just how special that act is. Or better phrased, how valuable your spouse is, how helpful they are, or how sweet they are. Or how, you are really glad you married them.

You’re welcome.

LOL

For the next few weeks or even months, I’ll be focusing my blogs on marriage. Especially during the retreat’s registration period. Don’t know about the retreat, check out our site. Pray on it. And consider joining us. You won’t regret!

Www.fightingformarriages.com

Thanks again for your attention. Remember you are your own competition.

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