Respect for your husband + Self-Respect helps your marriage…
Did you know that respect for your husband + self-respect actually helps your marriage?
Here’s a brief glance at what that can look like:
So don’t be “wrong at the top of your voice,” as Emerson Eggerich puts it. If your husband is interested in growing your marriage, know he’ll hear the truth better from a man, so I encourage you to attend one of their conferences. A Family Life Conference is also an awesome tune up! We’ve been about five times.
Are you lying to your husband? STOP. Tell the truth – that’s what I’m talking about with “tell you my truth” – your truth may sound like, “The story I’m telling myself is that you are angry with me because you wish you hadn’t come to this restaurant. Is that true?” Or, “It hurts my feelings when you ask me a question and then cut me off in the middle of my answer. Can you not do that, please?”
In Monday’s post, we talked about why you may be feeling taken advantage of in your marriage. I hope that you joined us in the Strength & Dignity eCourse if you saw yourself with some opportunities from the self-assessment. Dare you to take inventory in the boundaries department by taking a look at that post!
What about you? How does “respecting yourself” (the essence of Monday’s discussion) fit into your marriage? How about your parents’ marriage?
Love to you!
Nina
. . . . .I love the distinction above between “The story I’m telling myself is that you are angry with me because you wish you hadn’t come to this restaurant. Is that true?” -vs.- “It hurts my feelings when you ask me a question and then cut me off in the middle of my answer. Can you not do that, please?” Commitment to honesty, absolutely critical. You can’t deal with issues by guessing at them.
“What about you? How does “respecting yourself” (the essence of Monday’s discussion) fit into your marriage?”
. . . . Well, we will never gain anyone’s approval by begging for it. When we stand confident in Christ and our own worth, respect follows. I don’t always do that and when I begin to care too much about what everyone else says, my confidence shrinks and I start to feel like an insignificant, little girl in a strange land of intimidating giants. But when I realize who I am in Christ, WOW. . . . You and I are children of God and precious treasures! Daughters of the Living Light. Persons of the highest caliber. πόλις (a city) ὄρους (on a hill) δύναται (that is not able) κρυβῆναι (to be hidden). . . . It should be our light not our darkness that should most frighten us. Jesus is about radical, sweeping, encompassing empowerment. Set boundaries to feel safe, respected, and heard. Then engage in self-care. Every time single time I make a commitment to my own self-care, self-love and self-respect and then follow through, I build trust in myself. If your self-respect’s for sale, don’t complain when someone tries to bargain.
“How about your parents’ marriage?”. . . . . Nightmare. Repressed, not even counseling brings much up.
YES, Rebecca. Telling the truth. Our truth, God’s truth – and in a way that isn’t cruel, demeaning, dismissive to others. Praying for your repressions. :/ UGH.
Love to you,
N
Nina,
If the Lord wants you to, maybe you could explain what this means? “YES, Rebecca. Telling the truth. Our truth, God’s truth – and in a way that isn’t cruel, demeaning, dismissive to others.” . . . I’ll never be anything more than what Christ makes me. . . . The truth will set you free but first it will break your heart. . . . I don’t know why God set it up that way but He just did. I was at a Benedictine abbey above the town of Melk, in Lower Austria in August for weeks. That abbey was founded in 1089 and that monastery’s scriptorium was a major site for the production of Bible manuscripts all across Europe (something I am always interested in!) Countless manuscripts. Anyways, it is so obvious from those ancient manuscripts and woodcuts in them that self-hatred and shame (self-criticism and loathing as a spiritual practice of humility) was so much fueled by ALL the church’s materials. This is what they taught for a thousand plus years. I know you know how wrong that is. I think that lack of self-compassionate-love leads a lot of individuals to disappoint the people who love them unconditionally, and love the ones who hurt them the most. Compassion is such a battle with ourselves and the absence of self-love can never be replaced with the presence of people’s love for you. I know you understand all that too. I wonder why those hundreds and hundreds of monks, across all those centuries never figured that out? It’s not like they didn’t know the Scriptures or were not praying all the time. How could they confuse self-hatred and shame (self-criticism and loathing as a spiritual practice) with humility? Crazy! But I wouldn’t have known it either if I hadn’t learned it from you, even if you didn’t know you were teaching it to me. What the monastic hermit does in or outside of a monastery, is push and push through every false notion until finally they are left with groundless ground. The technology is silence. Silence is all that is left when you have pushed hard enough. As one monk told me: “You don’t worship God standing up; you worship God on your belly, worship is speechIess adoration.”
Much love,
Rebecca
Was just agreeing with you. Nothing deep. 🙂
Any ideas on how to convince my husband to attend a Christian marriage conference? He says they’re a waste of time because he has heard it all before.
Carrie
Carrie:
Sometimes we just need to do what “we” need to do, and things change anyhow. Sometimes our husbands think we are “giving them advice” if we want them to attend “a marriage conference”. Have you joined the “Strength and Dignity eCourse?” Believe me, it does work if we begin to “work on ourselves” and stop placing expectations on our husbands. Hope I am being helpful, and not discouraging. You are here, so you obviously want to learn. That is good.
i have spent my lifetime trying to love & respect myself..it just doesn’t happen & has gotten worst as people have always been critical of me…that makes it that much harder…Jane Baker
Jane,
Maybe you could go to counseling to find out why? It may come down to answering questions like this: People have always been critical of me because… Jane whatever those becauses are, then you because them until you get down to the reasons. We cannot make these behaviors go away, no matter how much we “try” —we have to see what the root cause is, and heal that in Christ. Once we identify the cause then we can find the true cure! This disconnect from the True Source of Love occurs out of some form of non-repentance/ ignorance/ not-knowing, in fullness. ( i.e.: “Forgive them Father for they know not what they are doing.”) Anyway, that is what they do with me in counseling. . . . I’m seriously praying for you! btw, Christ will always love you and He loves you just the way you are because that is what Grace is all about. That’s a done deal, you don’t need to do anything for that to happen, just accept it.