The Love Dare: Love believes the best – Day 7

In the depth and private corridors of your heart, there are two rooms. The first one is called the Appreciation Room. It’s where your thoughts go when you encounter positive and encouraging things about your spouse. On the walls of this room are written kind words and phrases describing the good attributes of your spouse. Words like, ‘You mean the world to me’, ‘I am everything I am, because you loved me’, ‘I am proud of you my hubby’, ‘it was the best decision to marry you’, ‘you are a great cook’, ‘ you are beautiful, yes its true, very beautiful’, ‘you give me assurance and comfort’. Am sure you have many more examples already. Most things in the appreciation are formed during the early stages of a marriage. These are things that you liked and respected about your loved one. They were true and honorable.

Unfortunately now, you don’t visit this room often as you used to do. You probably spend more time in another competing room called the Depreciation Room. On the walls of this room are written things that bother and irritate you about your spouse. They were placed there out of frustration, hurt feelings, and the disappointment of unmet expectations. It’s filled with weaknesses and failures of your husband or wife. Their bad habits, hurtful words and poor decisions are written in big letters. Words like ‘My wife is so selfish’, ‘my husband is not understanding’, ‘my husband does not even listen to me’, ‘I regret marrying this girl’, ‘If only I knew’, ‘and the way he pretends before people’,’ he is such a jerk’, ‘men will always cheat on you’, ‘I knew it, it was just a matter of time’, ‘he is such a hopeless guy’, ‘she is with me just coz of the money’. Am sure you have many more examples already.

People fall out of love in the Depreciation room. Spending time in this room kills marriages. It’s where separation and divorces are plotted. The more time you spend in this room, the more you devalue your spouse and things get from bad to worse. Basically your marriage and your spouse for that matter depreciate in value.

Let’s be honest here. Everyone has areas that need improvement and growth. Everyone has some unresolved issues, some form of baggage or hurt from previous failed relationship. We have all sinned. But we have this unfortunate tendency to downplay our own negative attributes while putting our partner’s failures under a magnifying glass. Lets be real here. By default we are inclined to do bad things, that is how we were born. It can happen to you. Before you demonize your spouse, remember that even for you, if conditions are ‘right’ you will do exactly what your spouse did, probably worse.

Love knows the existence of the Depreciation Room and does not live in denial that it exists. But love chooses not to live there. You must decide to stop running to this room and lingering there after every frustrating event in your marriage. It does not do any good and drains the joy out of your marriage. Love chooses to believe the best about people. It gives them a chance to improve on those specific areas. It’s time to shift to the Appreciation Room, to settle down and make it your home. You must reign on focusing on the negative thoughts regarding your spouse, instead of looking at them as areas that need improvement. Instead of ‘you are so selfish’; you say ’Honey, I think let’s look at another perspective to this issue’. Instead of ‘you are so insensitive to my emotions’, you say ‘sweetheart, as a woman I would appreciate if you did or did not do certain things to me. I feel much better if you would consider doing this and that’.

Please get out of the Depreciation room, where the love for your spouse loses its value big time and move to the Appreciation room, where as a Long term investor, you will  be putting all your investments now, correcting the mistakes that comes along the way, but maintaining the same urge. To invest for the long-haul.

TODAY’S DARE:

For Today’s dare, get two sheets of paper. On the first one, spend a few minutes writing out positive things about your spouse (things that you like). Then do the same thing with the negative things on the second sheet. Place both sheets in a secret place for another day. There is a different purpose and plan for each. At some point during the remainder of the day, pick a positive attribute from the first list and thank your spouse for having this characteristic.