What is your attitude (or mood) when you talk about your marriage? Are you negative, angry, resentful? Do you blame your spouse for problems within the marriage?
While your attitude may not be “everything” as the phrase goes, it is certainly a key part of just how well or how badly your life’s battles will go.
You can blame your spouse for your problems. That won’t change anything. You can blame yourself for your problems. That won’t make your problems go away. Or, you can change your attitude, accept that not everything that happens in life will be a positive but whatever happens you’ll deal with it to the best of your ability and move on, using the experience to your advantage.
The right “attitude” can serve you well during troubled times in your marriage:
“I am not going to remain in this marriage if you continue your abuse.”
“You keep saying you’ll stop drinking but you’re just saying the words, you’re not seeking help. Do you understand that if you don’t get help and if you don’t stop drinking our marriage will end?”
“Perhaps there are problems in our marriage and maybe there are things I need to change but don’t say it’s my fault you cheated. It’s your weakness that caused you to betray the marriage vows, not my ‘flaws’.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you tell me that you don’t want your parents so involved in every aspect of our life, what would really make a difference would be you telling them that they need to be less involved and keep telling them until they understand.”
“They’re your children, too. You have to share the discipline with me. Right now have ‘good parent-bad parent’ roles and you’re the good parent because you never tell them ‘no’ or punish them when they deserve it — you leave it up to me. I’m frustrated that we can’t agree on discipline because you would rather be the ‘good guy’ in their eyes when you know their actions require some type of punishment. We’re they’re parents, we have to have a united front.”
Attitude is all about choices. You can choose to accept a spouse’s poor behavior or you can choose to do something about it. Sometimes the choice is to take no action as many spouses do when they find their spouse has betrayed them. They take no action until they’re stronger emotionally and more prepared to deal with the situation. Sometimes the choice is to start divorce proceedings or arrange for a legal separation hoping that such drastic action will be the catalyst toward marriage repair.
No matter what shape your marriage is in, you positive attitude can make your life better. It may not save your marriage — or maybe it will. You have a choice to accept what you have and make the best of it or whine and complain and wish that you’d been dealt a better hand in the card game of life.
There are millions of people barely surviving each day in Third World countries. How can you not be grateful for having a better “hand” than that?
Perhaps attitude is everything.