There are disruptors in the world today transforming processes, products, and understanding because of words of exhortation spoken over them by parents, teachers, and mentors. There are also the discouraged who are struggling to find a last measure of hope, in part because of the words of even the well-meaning. In both cases, the impact of words cannot be underestimated. Words have meaning because we give them meaning, and the source and context of our words can serve to magnify those words to the point where they become life-giving or life-destroying. Words have transformed friendships to lovers but also lovers to enemies. Words have an uncanny power to lift up or destroy, which can be especially dangerous given that in marriage they are often our most instinctive reaction to moments of hardship and high emotion. Everything hinges on perspective.
When Friends Feel Like Enemies
After years of marital challenges, a still loyal but discouraged couple consistently found themselves unleashing an ugly, bitter monster on each other during moments of disagreement and discord. In one instance of heightened emotion, one actually used the word “enemy” as a descriptor of the other, with the implication of perpetuity. This increasingly frequent subconscious assumption finally became a verbal confession. It may be accurate to say that when we act and react without kindness and grace (and certainly with malice and vitriol), we are effectively treating our spouse as an enemy. Still, a healthy marriage has the ability to separate behavior from character.
Assessing The Health Of A Marriage
There may be three broad categories to classify the health of a marriage. There are certainly couples that are regressing, just as there are couples on an upward trajectory of growth. This is perhaps the most reasonable profile a couple should aim for, honoring, with humility, the hiccups and missteps of growth while at the same time aiming toward greater maturity. The third category can be the most dangerous: the plateaued couple who have a marriage on cruise control. What characterizes a plateau is its consistently level surface that eventually comes to an end, usually in a free fall. As a great marriage doesn’t happen by accident, consistent passive neglect, no matter the reason, is the recipe for a free fall caused by a severely depleted emotional tank meeting conflict. Perhaps this best explains the couple that appeared happy and connected within their social and family circle, only to abruptly separate or divorce.
From At Last! To Complacency
This slow, cruising drift usually has a magical beginning. What could be called the “At Last!” moment in a wedding, where the excited groom sees the bride walking down the aisle adored in a dress that made her feel her most beautiful, excited to present herself to him, launched them into matrimony. Yet on cruise control, the love of pursuit, kindness, discovery, dreaming, processing, confessing, and forgiving atrophies until loss. Just as a car will drive without any noticeable performance decrease until the last fumes of fuel are exhausted, so it is with a marriage on cruise control. “At Last!” becomes complacency, synonymous with mediocrity, which ultimately surrenders to the belief that love and friendship have become enemies and the end.
The Power To Heal
Yes, words have the power to destroy, but they also have the power to heal and give life. The couple who experienced a verbal slip confessed the fear of an enemy harbored in their hearts. They were in the presence of a third party that called them back to sobriety. With a simple pause, a deep breath, a gaze into each other’s eyes, and a confession of truth, the subconscious thought was subdued by a conscious word: “You are not my enemy.” While it takes much more intentionality to redress a marriage that’s been coasting, the act of conscious confession serves as a brake pedal, breaking the state of cruise control and sowing health and life back into the relationship. These are among the seeds of proactivity required for an upward trajectory of growth and a well-filled emotional tank. Does your spouse know you believe they aren’t your enemy, and have you found yourself believing they are?
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