Opposites are supposed to attract, but what if, instead, they lead to decades of misunderstandings and hurt?
Every Friday I like to run a short inspirational marriage piece with just one thought. And today I want to look at how being married to someone who’s an opposite can lead to danger if we don’t deliberately make room for the differences.
Sheila’s Marriage Moment: When Opposites Repel
Let’s take a couple that are opposites: he’s a logical Spock, and she’s a warm, fuzzy feeling type of person. Or perhaps she’s the one who values logic, and he just wants to feel cherished.
Now let’s get them married.
Over the years she wants to feel connected, but he withdraws into work. She experiences that as rejection. As she pleads with him to connect, he doesn’t know what to make of her outbursts. So he withdraws more and more into work. She grows angry, and he doesn’t know why. Soon whenever they talk there’s tension. He knows she’s always mad at him; she feels that he’s unfeeling and perhaps even cruel.
Or, perhaps she’s the one who withdraws into schedules and organization, and he tries to reach out. That leaves her feeling that he’s pathetic, and she grows even more organized and straight-laced to try to compensate for his inability to cope with life, as she sees it. And soon they are miles apart.
I’ve seen couples like this at some marriage conferences I’ve taught at recently. And I know others like that personally. In fact, I’ve had several friends tell me that their husbands are abusive, largely because they’re cruel and always angry.
Yet when I really look at the relationships, I don’t see abuse. I see years and years and layer upon layer of simple misunderstandings, which grow into something so big it seems insurmountable.
Don’t get me wrong–I believe emotional abuse is real, and I’ve written recently about what to do if you’re married to a controlling husband. But all the abusive relationships I have seen have several commonalities: the husband is manipulative, not just distant; the husband acts differently outside the home than inside the home; and the teenagers in the house know exactly what’s going on.
In so many marriages, though, it’s just that the couple sees the world in such radically different ways that they think the other isn’t just abnormal; they think they’re morally wrong.
What would happen, though, if early in the relationship they simply realized: one of us values logic while the other values emotion. Neither is right and neither is wrong, and, in fact, by valuing each other our differences can make us better people!
Before we assume our spouse isn’t just different, but is actually bad, let’s ask ourselves: “could their behaviour be explained simply because they see the world differently?” Maybe if we started to try to see the world through each other’s eyes, we could tear down some of those walls, and not feel so much like we’re married to a stranger.
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New season (the warm weather is finally here to stay! Yay!), new (older) posts in the Top 5 positions! The wedding season is about to start and I’ve got some marriage tips to get us all ready for the heat! And also a lot of really great thoughts to discuss, so check it out!
#1 NEW Post on the Blog: Do We Know What It Means To Serve Our Husbands?
#3 on the Blog Overall: 50 Most Important Bible Verses To Memorize
#5 from Facebook: Honeymoon Blues To “O”ver The Rainbow
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I’m in Pennsylvania with the RV again!
I’m speaking tonight in Shippensburg and Sunday in Canton, so if if you’re in the area, come on by! (check out the Events in the sidebar for more info!)
The Facebook Page was a Riot this Week
So I posted this on Facebook this week:
And the responses were hilarious!
Then I also asked this question:
And the responses were funny, but also really helpful! I’m totally going to turn that into a post.
So if you’re not on the Facebook Page, you really should come on over.
If You Didn’t See Katie’s Video Yesterday…
…you really should. I really liked this one:
We’re Got Winners!
Thank you so much for everyone who entered my contest with the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle! Dana B. won dinner with me. She’s from Washington state, and I’m hoping to meet her later this month. And Mindy H. from Colorado won me speaking at their church, and we’re hammering out the details now. It will likely be sometime next May.
Other people won some ebook bundles, most of which have now been mailed to them. I’m still in the process of doing the last four winners (it takes a while to upload everything to Google Drive! 🙂 ), but they should be finished this morning. So thank you for sending me your receipts from the Bundle, everyone!
That’s it, everybody! I hope you have an amazing weekend.
Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 29 years and happily married for 24! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 7 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
Thank you for the reminder! My fiance and I are like this. I’m Spock, and he’s warm and fuzzy. Both of us were apprehensive at the beginning of our relationship because of our differences, but we’ve both worked to understand the other, and thanks to the advice and experience of others like you, have worked to speak to the other’s natural tendencies. I’ve learned a lot from this blog that I will do my best to take into my marriage.
So glad!
And another spot on post this week for me. It’s kind of funny that those things that attracted you to your spouse in the first may be the very same things that drive you nuts when you live together with them on the day to day. We are definitely oposites and thank God we were part of some team where we did some personality tests and team building early in our marriage. It helps to know what personality type your spouse is, how that effects his way of thinking and doing things and also the team building worships we went through were good to learn to appreciate and embrace the differences because each one adds value to the team even though there may be some tension that in most cases simply needs freedom and some grace!
I am a logic, goal oriented person and an introvert and he is a people person, needs harmony (I think he is more emotional than me) and an extrovert. I can have a good argument about a topic and leave it unresolved and not feel threatened that the relationship is falling apart because the issue is just an intellectual one and is not me. It doesn’t make me feel unloved if my husband doesn’t agree with me on health food. But he really needs to feel harmony. If I am grumpy for some reason he can’t stand it… even if it has nothing to do with him. He needs a friendly wife 🙂
My husband and I might as well have come from different planets! I won’t lay out the entire story (it would be a veritable book) but we have gone through a lot of sorting out each other’s perspectives on things and continue to do so. One of the biggest breakthroughs we had was when I read the book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain. There are sections of it that go into how the brains of different people react differently and it was fascinating! It was a huge lightbulb moment of “Oh THAT’S why he does that thing!” and vice verse. It helped us understand each other so much better and I think was key in helping us get through a season of unemployment this past year without too much strain on our marriage.
“Quiet” was one of my best reads last year! So many good insights in one book…
My husband and I are opposites for sure. We have had to do a lot in order to see the world through the other person’s lens. It is hard at times, but I’m thankful to be with him!
I feel so sorry for these couples. We are so blessed, God brought us together; we met in church.
We are different in many ways, she is Canadian and I am English, she is a language person and I am a numbers, logical person. We have had differences over the years but we are each other’s only love and we appreciate each other more and more as time goes by. Remember NOTHING is impossible for God!
This is my husband and me! We are such opposites. It can be fun, but it was quite a stresser for awhile. Our game changer was taking a personality test called Prism Lights DISC. We discovered that even though we are opposites (He is a high D personality and I am a high S personality) we did have the common language of being high C as well. Based on the stuff we learned from this test we realized that we actually have strengths and weaknesses that compliment each other.
We focus on being a team and working together and we have an incredible marriage.
My husband and I have been opposites from the get go!!! And that was over 45 years ago…….. You learn to make the best of it and have fun with it. Almost weekly we are in a conversation with others and we choose the opposite of each other, laugh and say “imagine that” or “does that really surprise us”?
Learn to compromise and remember the covenant you made is my advice for this one 🙂
That’s great, Cindy!
Love this! My husband and I definitely have our differences as I am a wordsy, emotion-based person and he is a quiet, logic-based person. We’ve been married for 2 years and it has been a (lovely) challenge learning to understand each other’s “language” and appreciate our differences but I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I’ve learned to appreciate my husband’s quiet, logic-based way and when I see that I’m struggling with something I’ll say something like, “I really need help with this … because it makes me feel like this which I know you don’t mean to …” He’s wonderful to meet my need even when he doesn’t understand why but he has to see that there’s a problem in the first place.
Anyways, yes! I think you’re right on in encouraging couples to appreciate and make room for differences instead of seeing them as morally deficient.
Blessings to you!
This is a great post, Sheila. My husband and I are very similar in personalities, so we don’t have this struggle. However, being alike has its own disadvantages! It is easy for us to get into boring ruts, unless we make an effort to avoid them. If couples who have different personalities can learn to appreciate each other’s strengths, they can bring a lot of fun and excitement into their marriages!
This post was spot on!
I was once taught that each couple represents 2 halves of a whole, and that whole was created in the image of God (my interpretation of Genesis 1:27). That idea helps me frame differences with my husband. We have different personalities….and that’s ok. In fact, it’s more than ok, because we complement each other. When we can look at the way that our partner is different and not feel the need to compete or prove that we are better, but realize that we need both aspects to work in harmony in order to be our best, we develop true respect for each other.
I’m a calm introvert. My husband is an energetic extrovert. There are times that I want to say, “why can’t you be more patient?” or “why are you always talking on the phone or online?” That’s when I have a little talk with myself, and remind myself that if my husband were as calm as I am, nothing would ever get done, and if he spoke to other people as little as I do, we’d be hermits. I’m the brakes, he’s the gas, and you need both working together, each at the proper time, to make a vehicle go.