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More on compromise today.

Often, we find ourselves at odds because one or both of us suffer from emotional wounds. The issue of extroversion and introversion I have been discussing is not about brokenness, but it may be exaggerated due to past injury. With other things, our desire for something, or our desire to avoid it, may be mostly or entirely about ways we were hurt long before we met our spouse.

It’s humbling to admit to ourselves that we want what we want because of something that needs healing. It’s especially difficult when we admit that what we want costs our spouse. 

You needing something, or needing to avoid it, because of past injury is not bad or wrong. It’s also not selfish, and you should be honest about your feelings instead of just doing what your spouse wants. Admitting why you feel as you do to your spouse is a brave and beneficial thing. It may feel embarrassing. It may feel like it puts you at a disadvantage. But if your spouse won’t use it against you to get what they want, it can make the situation easier. 

We can deal with childhood injuries, work through the pain, and find transformation. Telling your spouse that your past is why you want what you want is promising to deal with your injury. There is no guarantee that your desire will do a 180, but if you get healing, it will be easier for you to do or not do whatever.

Actually getting healing can be a difficult task. It means being brutally honest with yourself about our past. That may mean admitting someone was not as nice or caring as you have told yourself. It could also shine a light on something selfish, harmful, or destructive that you did. 

Issues like this often come from repeated events that happened over many years. Certain patterns can play out in our young lives, beating us down and creating in us defensiveness, desires, or weaknesses that are not an inherent part of who God made us. But when we get hit the same way over and over, we start to accept that what this creates in us is a fundamental part of who we are. Once we get there, we lose the ability to recognise the behaviour or thinking as alien. 

Talking with your spouse may help you expose some of this. But many folks will need a trained third party for that. Story work is a great tool for this, and I recommend the folks at Aldrich Ministries for that.

~ This is Paul, and dealing with your past makes it far easier to Do Marriage Well.

Set out a live trap, as we thought we might have lost some eggs. And today I saw this:

Didn’t catch an egg thief, and egg counts are right. But how did a hen get in there, lay an egg, and get back out only tripping the trap after it was outside?

Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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