Don’t Take It Personally

When Beth’s husband started working late and spending way too much time with a female co-worker Beth joined a health club and stepped up her attempts to lose ten pounds.

Months later and over ten pounds lighter, she was devastated when her husband gave her the “I don’t love you” speech and moved in with his co-worker. A year later and after several failed reconciliations, Beth and her husband divorced. A few months later her now ex-husband married his co-worker.

It wasn’t Beth’s fault that her husband stepped outside their marriage but she took on the burden of his actions. She assumed that she had a deficiency, a flaw, that forced him to find a better, more suitable partner. In reality, Beth could have completely remade herself and her husband would have still done the same thing because his actions weren’t because of her. It was his flaw that caused him to stray, not hers.

When a wife drinks too much or a husband becomes addicted to porn, it is not the spouse’s fault and it’s not the spouse who needs to change. The spouse of an alcoholic or a person addicted to porn may need to get counseling in order to understand the problem and develop coping skills, but they cannot take the other person’s actions personally. It isn’t about them.

Being married to an abusive spouse can turn your life upside down and depending upon the level of abuse it’s very easy to take it personally. But it’s still not about you. It’s all about your spouse and his or her need to be abusive. It’s their flaw, not yours.

Beth’s husband told her she had changed and that was the reason he found his co-worker so much more attractive and compatible. The reality was that for 25 years he had found her quite attractive and quite compatible. Did she suddenly become someone he could no longer love? No. The problem was within him and nothing she could have done would have changed his actions.

It’s important that we all take responsibility for our actions. But to take personally the actions of another is futile and pointless regardless the outcome of those actions.