Learning Your Spouse is a lifelong journey

            I believe it’s safe to say “everything in life seems fairly manageable”. Through classes we learn to manage our finances and other things we’re responsible for. We learn how to take care of our pets, our dwelling places and everything else. My question is “how much time do we spend managing and maintaining the relationships with those that we hold closest to our hearts?” Sometimes when we face troubles with our finances, the original issue isn’t that our income is low it may be that we spend too freely on things that we don’t need. My point here is that the problem and the solution begins with us. I know this is a hard pill to swallow, but take the challenge. I’ve been in relationships that have ended due to the other persons neglect, but when I looked back and analyzed the situation I seen errors that were made on my behalf. They may have not been the main issue which caused separation but they definitely contributed to the demise of the relationship.  No one is innocent when it comes to divorce or any other issue or situation that may arise in life.

            I feel that there are things we can work on and know that we are still progressing. There is always room to grow and mature.  At times we may place ourselves in a mental stand-still state which is equivalent to being brain dead. It’s a stubbornness that can cause us to become self-absorbed with no space available to obtain new information for growth. This can be the reason you may find some individuals who live their lives like they know everything there is under the sun and nothing else can be learned or taught to them.  If a person has this mentality in a marriage, they can’t learn their spouse.

            We as humans can never learn everything there is to be learned. In marriage a husband may seek to understand his wife but he can never attain all knowledge concerning his wife. There’s a lack of consistency in all relationships; the way we react at one moment may be drastically different the next time. I found myself placing expectations on my wife because of things that I knew about her, I thought she’d never change but over time I’ve learned that I  have to continue learning her. I have to keep updating my brain to handle new changes that may occur.  

            If you are facing any type of problems in your marriage; whether that’s finances, addictions, cheating, lying, or other issues then there is more to be learned and practiced. Some things that can be vital and recurring are learning and experiencing healing for yourself or learning and experiencing forgiveness for each other.  Every issue or challenge that I have faced in my marriage has been used as an opportunity to learn and grow.  My wife and I are constantly learning how to communicate with one another. We have experienced the feeling of confusion in the way that we communicate verbally and nonverbally with each other. The learning process begins here. It can be quite frustrating at times, but just as we take time with working out the frustrations of learning our favorite hobbies, we should continue learning our spouse.