BEFORE YOU GET ANGRY WITH YOUR SPOUSE

I was sharing a couple of lessons from our marriage journey with an intending couple. Our first conflict in marriage was a compliment that was taken as an insult. It took a while to be able to correct the impression that the compliment created.

In marriage, there is a tendency that both parties will communicate from their background. Your choice of words and responses are connected to your experiences while growing up.

What will help improve communication and reduce offences? You need to master what I will call the principle of intent and interpretation.

There is no God-fearing spouse who would want to intentionally hurt you with their words and actions. There are times that emotions will take over and they may spill over with words like, “Do you even care?”, “Leave me alone. I don’t want to see you” or even “You frustrate my life”. Words can tear into the soul and wreck a lot of havoc.

If you will be free from the havoc that reckless words spoken in moments of anger can cause, you need to learn how to interpret the moment with the mindset of “I am sure he or she did not intend to hurt me”.

Once you interpret their action with the right intent, you deny the devil his working tools. He cannot bring records of unrelated circumstances to you while seeking to build a web of confusion and offence. You have cut off unnecessary links to strange thoughts.

Forgiveness will be hard where a library of hurting words and moments has been built. You will realize that you interpret even loving actions in the light of your hurts and offences.

A lot of the issues you will face in marriage will be ” great intentions gone wrong” because of how it was communicated or when it was communicated. Love on overdrive can sometimes make stupid decisions but before you scold for the stupid decision, commend for the love first. Find a good time to speak about the “but” you have spotted.

Do not give the devil a foothold in your marriage. He wants to be the interpreter of words and actions when he cannot be the supplier. You have denied him the role of the supplier, do not let him play the role of the interpreter.

And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.
Ephesians 4:26‭-‬27 NLT

temilOluwa Ola, Eruwa