I want to talk about marriage Tipping Points this week.
If you put a big rock on one side of a balance scale, and then start to add pebbles one at a time to the other side, eventually one single pebble will cause the pebble side to drop as the rock rises. There’s nothing special about that last pebble. It might well be smaller than most of the rest. And had you not added any of the other pebbles before it, that one would not have made a change.
It’s the sum of the pebbles that makes the change!
Tipping points in relationships are the same way. A number of small words or actions pile up until one causes a huge change, for good or bad. It might usher in a much better marriage. It might threaten to end the marriage. Or anything in between. And unlike our rock example, relationship tipping points are not easily reversed by removing one small thing.
The problem is we don’t see all the little things piling up. We see the big change, and we tend to attribute it to something very recent.
If it’s a bad change, we focus on that one rude thing we said or unloving thing we did, rather than the sum of such words or actions. We try to deal with that one thing, which in and of itself means virtually nothing. We waste valuable time focused on something that won’t change the situation.
If the change is good, it’s tempting to think we have found the magic word or action that makes our spouse happy, or agreeable, or less of something we dislike. And again, what we are focusing on is one small part of the whole, and it’s the whole that caused the change.
~ This is Paul, saying that tipping points can cause massive changes.
So Widget dreams of being a shield maiden of Rohan.
The “Hobbit” on the right edge of the picture is our youngest grandson.
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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