“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” 1 Corinthians 13:1
We are in the month of February. The month we celebrate Valentine’s Day. The month of love. And of course, the days leading up to Valentine’s Day are filled with the promises of love and we are told how wonderful love is and what your Valentines will expect from you…unfortunately, for too many, Valentine’s isn’t always a happy day. Expectations are left unmet. We don’t have a special someone to share it with or the special someone we have is clueless about our needs. We end up singing the lyrics to the remake by Nazareth: “Love Hurts.” Because while love is wonderful, it is also a lot of work and sometimes love does indeed hurt.
I had the privilege of preaching last Sunday at my church and my sermon was in part on relationships and the four behaviors that if we use, will signal the doom of any relationship we have. I got my information on these four behaviors from the Gottman institute. This is a fantastic resource for relationships. Anyway, the four behaviors? They are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. All ways, that will destroy any relationship we have with another person. And when you look at those words you realize they are not warm and fuzzy behaviors we should inflict on someone we profess to love. However, when we are tired, mad, hurt, feeling lonely, have unmet needs, are irritated, or any one of a number of emotions we feel when something in life isn’t going the way we think it should, we lash out. Worse, we tend to lash out at the one we are the most comfortable with in life. The one we say we love.
Many times, the problem we have is we expect people to be something they are just not going to be. We may be married to a man who is a wonderful provider and even cleans the house, but he will never bring home flowers. If you want flowers that badly, let him know or buy them yourself because that is not him. He will drive out late at night to change your flat tire no matter how tired he is. He will make sure the furnace or A/C is always working so you will not be too cold or too hot and a whole host of other things. But he won’t have a chance to do what you expect him to do unless you tell him what you want. And even then, it just may not be in his wheelhouse to do. The same is true for men who expect their wives to be something they just are never going to be.
When our expectations go unmet and we don’t let the other person in the relationship know what we want, we begin to criticize. We use hurtful expressions to talk about our partners or we offer only judgment and disapproval to anything they do. We become defensive and blame our partner for all the things we don’t do. It is their fault we didn’t take out the trash, they should have reminded us…we refuse to own our own mistakes and typically we scapegoat our partner. We show contempt as we use insults to put down our partner. We become hostile and our constant companion is anger in our relationship. We may use stonewalling where we just go silent and refuse to work any issues out. We basically quit the relationship and when we do that, the relationship is dead.
The good news is that we can reverse these four behaviors. We can remember why we fell in love with the person we are with. We can begin to be gentle with them and offer encouragement and show affection to the one we love. We can be honest with them about what we want. We can begin to accept responsibility for the ways we have contributed to the issues being faced and the ways we make mistakes. BTW…we all make mistakes. Being able to accept constructive feedback without taking it personally is always good. These are just a few things we can do to override the four destructive habits that will kill any relationship we are in. Whether it is spousal, friendship, family or whatever. These four behaviors will destroy it.
In this month of love, may your relationships be happy and filled with love.
Peace,
Pastor Beth
Beth's Blog 