They are like chips of different colors, patterns of learned behavior that appear in every moment of life together and face each situation of daily living. Everyone wants to act according to the color of the tab, forgetting that it is the couple who have to look for “their own color.”
For example, if the man is accustomed to act according to yellow and red the woman in her life, together, the wisdom is to seek their own color: orange.
Theirs is not that of other couples. If they succeed it will be much easier to understand. It is important to discuss these points, compromise, negotiate. “You like it this way and I like it that way. Let's find a spot that suits us both.”
An important element to consider is that there are not currently defined roles. Forty years ago, right or wrong, the roles of women and male were structured. He worked and she stayed in the house. Today it has reached level playing roles, which usually appears in women working and taking care of their old obligations. Not having well defined roles of each other is an important source of conflict.
Each couple has to find its own way according to their needs and aspirations, based on the interaction of both, without allowing third-party influences. It is necessary that both will attach importance to their relationship. The: “you are of interest to me” is fundamental. It matters what the other is, what the other thinks, what the other feels or wants. “What we want.”
The mere fact of being aware of these points: that each brings learned behaviors, and that is problematic the lives of two people under the same roof, is enough to help the relationship. Both should know that living with a partner is not an easy task. It is complicated because there is no perfect world and sometimes a painful landing cannot be avoided.
It is the same as the problem of adolescence. If parents do not know that this is a critical stage in their child’s development, their behavior will be interpreted incorrectly. They will think that the child is at war with them. Without this knowledge, adolescence would be an extremely critical stage in the relationship of a family. Just understanding what adolescence means greatly reduces the family crisis.
We must also be clear in the relationship something that previously was not considered. And that is the fact that the human being is always changing.
It was thought that people reached adulthood and there ended the process of change. Today it has been proven that humans continue to evolve and undergo a series of crises throughout their life. The midlife crisis is sometimes as strong as the crisis of adolescence.
We therefore have two people making a life together with similar expectations and individual processes which can be divergent.
It may be that one of the members of the couple is living a tremendous existence crisis, only by their age and the other at a flourishing stage of life. When two people marry and do not know these stages, they sometimes begin to misinterpret behaviors and believe the difficulties are due to their life together.
They take the bad mood, silence, dissatisfaction with life as a difficulty of the relationship of the couple and not as what it really is, which one of them is going through a difficult evolutionarily phase. Faced with this fact, the only attitude would be to accept this reality, and not take the behavior of the spouse as a personal attack, because it is not.
There are many elements in common that make life difficult, but it’s worth a try to work to have a good relationship, because there are many good and beautiful things in it! A happy home is real and true, if every day against obstacles we are able to improve ourselves, to give great importance to “you are of interest to me.”
To dialogue as a couple
1. In our lives together do we care about the “you” or are we still in the “I”?
2. Are there defined roles in our partnership?
3. Faced with the crisis of the other, how do we act? Do we feel displaced, attacked, or seek to redouble love to help the other out?
4. What do we propose to do after this dialogue?
To pray together
Lord Jesus,
in our daily living
there are many elements to overcome,
requiring us to overcome our self
to interest in you.
We always want to have you with us,
For you, help us increase our love,
but especially for you to teach us
to live together and thereby living as one
and not tarnish the great love we have.
When we discover crisis facing the other
We recognize their need, and never think
there is something wrong with the us.
Jesus may our coexistence
always be beautiful,
even at times when we must overcome obstacles.
Amen.
Crises and conflicts in marriages
“In your anger do not sin”:
Do not let the sun go down
while you are still angry (Eph 4:26).
When a marriage is not happy it is discovered that the source of that unhappiness generally is that the husband and wife sidestep the reality of their relationship, namely with its crisis, its real conflicts and their real problems.
Marriage is a relationship of love between a man and a woman. Traditionally they acted to stay together in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health ... or making that decision by relying almost exclusively on the role of parenting, “we stay together for the children”.
But times have changed: today there is an urgent need to strengthen the interpersonal relationship between husband and wife, to counteract the great destructive currents of our time, pushing couples toward individualism, materialism, and consumerism and life without God.
Therefore, marriages of this changing society need to focus all their attention on their marital relationship, to jointly defend and liberate themselves from the destructive powers, bravely facing their conflicts, their problems and crisis.
When speaking of crises within a marriage sounds like something negative and bad. It is believed that the couple in crisis ends up in arguments, fights, dislikes; and therefore, must be avoided.
On the contrary, the crisis in marriages should be seen as real opportunities to mature and grow. They are a sign of marital health. Marriages without crises are in cemeteries.
Some say: “We have no crisis in our marriage.” Crises are inevitable; but lack of awareness or non-recognition, making the couple unable to communicate in depth, therefore, their relationship will become shallow and gradually deteriorate. If a marriage does not face his marital crisis, they are sure they will never become a happy couple.
However, the cause of not overcoming a marital crisis is almost always due to lack of capacity to resolve conflicts in creative ways.
When a man and a woman are attracted, they begin to become aware of their differences. It is precisely these differences that arouse attraction and mutual interest. To realize they are in love, trying to reach a deep level of intimacy and share their personal experiences. Thus, they become vulnerable to each other. Once married (and after the honeymoon) those differences become a source of disagreements, arguments and conflicts of different degrees and levels.
Rodolfo: “It's hard to have to recognize that there are problems in our marriage that we must solve as soon as possible. It's easier to pretend to ignore or deny them.
I like to think that if we compare to other marriages, ours is pretty good; that all is not bad.
But it is an underhanded way to deceive ourselves, and