I'm trying to find a way to fit in to the context of my blog what I have to say about love. But this is, in fact, probably one of the most unlikely places to post this sort of advice. So all I can say to justify these thoughts here is that in life, and especially in homeschooling, most of what we teach really boils down to what we are. So though there may not be structured lessons on being a good spouse, for better or worse, you can bet that is what your children are learning at home with you.
Anyway, it's likely those of us who did not marry a high school sweetheart can relate to feeling like the people we thought we loved before we found the person we married, we didn't really love at all. "Ah," we said to ourselves when we found the right one, "THIS is what love is. What I thought was love before was something else, something less than what I have with this person."
I think we are right... and wrong. What we have found in the person we want to spend the rest of our lives, even eternity, with IS love. And it is more of it. What we had with former love-interests was probably, however, NOT the absence of love, but just a lower, baser form. That is okay. There are probably few 19 year-olds that can wrap their minds, let alone their lives, around the sort of selflessness that encompasses a more mature love.
Most of us are still at some phase of immaturity when it comes to love. THAT is okay too. Working, happy relationships can be found at every place on the continuum of love maturity. Often what strains a relationship is not where a couple falls on that continuum, but when one person falls noticeably behind another.
We watched a movie about Einstein, and it seems that his great mind was stuck in an adolescent capacity to give love. If you feel your spouse may be stuck right there with him, the first thing I would say is, it's time to embrace the reality that you have not married a perfect person. That is good news for all of us coming to this realization, because if our spouses were perfect, they may have wanted to marry other perfect people, and that would not have been us!
Yet we ARE loved, despite our imperfections. And our comfort is that while an imperfect spouse gives love imperfectly, we can still receive a perfect love from God to fill in the gaps. Remember that God loves us and waits for us to do our best and become better. We can practice becoming like Him while we wait for a spouse to do his or her best and become better.
So that is the first piece of advice: accept and forgive your spouse's place on the love continuum.
Next piece: Ask for the kind of love you need.
I think this is hard to do because we have all tried it, and instead of having our needs met, have been met with attack - because WE ourselves have made the people we love wrong for wanting more from us. We have taken a turn attacking, and being attacked. (Argh! I do this far too often with the needs of my children! But I suppose that is another post....)
(I do want to interject here, while I'm interjecting and filling this post with parentheses, that I'm not talking about physical or extreme emotional abuse. Blessedly, I don't have experience in a love relationship with people who resort to those tactics. I'm speaking here of love. Not of being used.)
So when you ask your spouse to grow in love, to progress on the love continuum, if he or she fails to act or change, you can continue to accept and forgive. And pray for him or her. THAT is HUGE. (As you have probably learned from homeschooling, the learner must be willing and ready for learning to occur. You can't coerce learning in academics OR in love.) We can even meet attacks with direct communication: "So what you are saying, essentially, is that you are unable at this time to love me in this way?" And importantly, add, "Okay." (I'm not saying you need to use those words, just that you communicate an attack - being made wrong for needing more from a spouse - IS a "no" to your request. And that you accept it.)
Final piece of advice: Never make the people you love wrong for needing you to love better or more.(In other words, never be the attacker. I DEFINITELY need to do better in this with my kids.) We MAY be busy, preoccupied, consider their needs immature or trivial. Their needs may be born of insecurity or weakness. We may have real-life time constraints in what we are able to do. And we might be right. But when we love someone, all of this "story" - our reasons and excuses - don't matter. What matters is what we are going to do about their needs. In the very least, those we love deserve our understanding, our empathy, and our desire to help. At times, this may be, in fact, ALL they need. For these demonstrate our own willingness to enhance our loving and progress in the love continuum.
I feel so blessed to homeschool, to be with my family right in the thick of what really matters. God has even said love - charity - is what matters most to Him. This month is a perfect time to up your loving game!
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