subject: Stop Being Offended; Have A Happy Marriage [print this page] If you want to have a happy marriage you have to make a conscious decision not to be offended. Decide to give your spouse the benefit of the doubt before jumping to conclusions. Stop being offended; no one can offend you unless you decide to let them.
Has your spouse ever done or said something to you where your reaction was to feel hurt or offended? It can be easy to get offended by your spouse if your thinking is defensive. Sometimes you even look for ways in your marriage to be offended just so that you can be right and your spouse will have done something that you can hold against them. Revisiting hurts and offenses over time will turn them into grudges. You often make those grudges a part of your emotional armor.
Holding onto offenses and grudges as an emotional protection for yourself or using them as a means of revenge always hurts you individually and it is destructive to your marriage. Grudge holding takes an emotional toll on you. You lug your offenses around waiting for the moment when you can take them out and use them against your spouse. Then you can hold them up as a shield to show your spouse that they are the bad guy. As you gather grudges it gets harder and harder as time goes on to let them go. You may even forget why you were mad at your spouse; you just remember that you are mad at them for something. When you carry a grudge you feel bad, hurt, resentful, revengeful, angry, bitter and devastated. You are the one that has those destructive feelings, most of the time your spouse doesn't even know that they have done something to offend or hurt you.
Holding onto past real or imagined offenses can erode a relationship over time. Resentment and negative tension between you will start to fester. It becomes progressive in nature. Guarding against future hurt you watch for it to happen again and when it does you add new instances to the previous ones piling up negative feelings toward your spouse.
People especially those in emotional relationships such as marriage do and say things that they really don't mean or they say them in a way that could be interpreted as being critical, offensive or hurtful when they didn't intend them to be taken that way.
The last time your husband said, "Is dinner ready yet?" Did you fly off the handle and assume that he thought you weren't meeting up to his expectation of dinner being finished right then?
The last time your wife said, "Did you take the garbage out?" Did you immediately get your back up and assume she was criticizing you for not having taken it out yet?
What about when you were asked, "Are you going to wear that?" Did you assume that your partner didn't like what you were wearing?
Do you react with anger or resentment if your spouse asks you where you are going? Do you think your spouse is checking up on you?
Getting mad and assuming that your spouse is trying to offend, hurt or pressure you will just create problems that probably didn't exist until you reacted to it in a negative manner. Instead of instantly reacting with anger, hurt or feelings of offense stop and evaluate if their intent was to create that reaction.
Instead of being automatically offended or hurt turn that around and automatically assume that they didn't mean to offend you or hurt you. Assume that if they had known how you would feel they would have chosen differently, spoken differently or made a different decision. If it happens more than once then it is time to talk about it. That doesn't mean you bring it up as an accusation, or in an angry way. You just need to let them know in a calm kind voice that what they have said or done has hurt or offended you and explain why. This allows them to redeem themselves, apologize and change their future behavior.
Forgiveness and giving the benefit of the doubt opens the way for communication and understanding. Be nice to yourself and create a happier marriage by giving your spouse the benefit of the doubt, stop holding onto offenses and let go of grudges. Forgiveness and giving the benefit of the doubt opens the way for communication and understanding. Take the time to think of all the good things your spouse has said and done and dwell on that. Your armor will be lighter and you will have a stronger happier marriage.
