Your spouse’s opinions may change over time, but seldom because you have lectured, pressed, insisted or demanded his or her conformity with your opinion. It is far more likely that your spouses opinion, or yours, will change simply by being aware of each others views and being open to allowing those views, and others one will witness as the years go by, percolate deep inside until that view begins to meld into one’s own opinions.
Acceptance of differences is what both wins hearts and eventually, at undetermined times and rates, can transform hearts and opinions.
Withholding acceptance, on the other hand, poisons intimacy.
In [amazon_link id=”0743265122″ target=”_blank” ]The Seven Levels of Intimacy[/amazon_link], Matthew Kelly writes:
The first truth of relationships is that all relationships have problems. They all have unresolvable problems. These unresolvable problems are usually the result of vastly different opinions on certain issues or varying expectations about the role each partner should play. All of these are the result of differences in upbringing, education, and experience.
…it is how we choose to deal with these unresolvable problems that most influences the quality and depth of our relationships.
The relationships that thrive despite their unresolvable problems are those in which the people acknowledge the problems, find ways to adapt to them, and over time even find them amusing. They don’t allow differing opinions to become a roadblock in their quest for intimacy.
The people whose relationships struggle take a very different path… They constantly argue to the point of gridlock; they keep hurting each other’s feelings, and consciously or subconsciously they stand at the stove saying, “I’ll give you wood when you give me heat.”
They withhold their love, affection, and acceptance from each other while promising themselves, “When I understand her I will accept her,” or vice versa. Over time, a pattern emerges. The people disagree about something; they criticize each other; they blame each other for their inability to resolve their differences; the tension escalates; the subject of the argument is abandoned for condescending and critical personal attacks; the argument becomes too painful, so one person (or both) abdicates; they retreat from the conflict and return to the superficial and safer levels [limiting conversation to cliches or facts, rather than opinions and values].
Unless they can learn a new way to deal with their unresolvable problems they will never taste the life giving waters of intimacy. The new way they desperately need to find is acceptance. . . .
We must work our way out from under the illusion that all problems can be resolved. Once we are liberated from the expectation that we should be able to resolve all the problems in our relationships, we are free to turn our attention to helping each other become the-best-version-of-ourselves.
It isn’t your job to fix the relationship. It is the relationship’s job to fix you.
Relationships are hard work, but the hardest work is letting go of our personal agendas and learning to accept that we are who we are and where we are right now for a reason.
Everything doesn’t have to be planned and controlled. Relationships should be treated as sacred mysteries. Allow the mystery to unfold in it’s own time.
The greatest gift we can give anyone in relationship is acceptance. Once we resolve to accept people for who they are and where they are, we are set free and so are they.
We are free to affirm them, encourage them, and appreciate them, and by liberating ourselves we set them free to be who they are and become all they were created to be.
All relationships have unresolvable problems.
It is difficult to come to come to terms with this truth at first, but in time you will discover, if you have not done so already, that it is how we deal with these unresolvable problems that usually determines the fate of our relationships.
Very few relationships lose their footing in the midst of great joy or even the everyday challenges; it is the unresolvable problems of relationships (and the illusion that they should not exist) that cause us to lose our footing.