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Question: I’m married and often find myself really frustrated or almost turned off by an opinion my husband has or comment he makes. I feel like that is only really appropriate to have while dating and trying to see if someone is for you and that I shouldn’t still be doing that or getting so stuck on one thing he says or thinks.
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Transcript
Automatic transcript; may contain mistakes, especially in Hebrew.
This week's question is, I'm married and often find myself really frustrated or almost turned off by an opinion my husband has or a comment he makes. I feel like that's only really appropriate to have while dating and trying to see if someone is for you, and I shouldn't still be doing that or getting so stuck on one thing he says or thinks. Well, it's true. When we're in a state of dating, we're really evaluating the other person, and we're asking ourselves, is this a person we could spend the rest of our life with? And once we're married, what we've made is a. commitment for eternity. Unless the marriage becomes immoral, it's our responsibility to work through things. But, I don't think that means that we're not allowed to have feelings or opinions about the things that our spouse thinks. Now, if you're having such an extreme reaction to an opinion, I would wonder what else is going on in the relationship. Sometimes there's an undercurrent of frustration in the relationship, and it's manifesting itself in a particular opinion. So, if your husband has an opinion about something, let's say, in his office, and you feel that that is a particular character flaw that he has,
you might be zoning in on the opinion because of something that really bothers you about his character. But I also think that while it's 100% okay to feel frustrated or feel annoyed by something that your spouse does, I also think it's important to turn inwards and really reflect on where that's coming from in you. Because at the end of the day, people are allowed to have opinions. They're allowed to have reactions to things. And it's our responsibility to be for ourselves and allow another person to be for themselves. And this is one of the challenges in marriage, because we're. constantly rubbing up on one another. Each person is doing something that might naturally bother the other person. There's friction in marriage, in all marriage. And so it becomes our responsibility to pull back, look inwards, and say to yourself, okay, if my husband does have that opinion, and if he does do that thing, and it really does bother me, whose issue is that? Is that my issue, or is that his issue? If he's doing something that's inappropriate, or something that you don't agree with, that's okay.
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He's entitled to do that. And it's his issue if it's going to impact him. But to the degree that it impacts you, it's your issue, and that's yours to work through. We must do our best in marriage to respect the humanity of the other person. So if our spouse has an opinion, it probably comes from a place where we can have real compassion for them. If we don't necessarily agree with it, that's okay. Now, when it comes to opinions about things that are in the relationship, so then that's where communication comes in. If your spouse has an opinion about the way the relationship should look, and you feel strongly that it shouldn't be that way, rather than be annoyed by his opinion, he's entitled to his opinion. But now there's a negotiation that occurs through communication. How can we work through this together because each one of us sees this differently?
If we're going to be annoyed by the other person, if we're not going to check our own emotions, emotions, then what's going to happen is the other person is going to sense that they're going to become defensive. Why are you annoyed by me? Why are you turned off by me? Nobody wants to be in a relationship where the other person doesn't want to be with them. So it's important when you're going through these things to really check in with yourself and say, okay, I'm about to enter into a communication with my husband. Is my husband worthy of respect? Is his humanity understandable? Can I have compassion for his humanity? And now, can we have an open and honest conversation, about the opinion? And that's again, assuming that the opinion is worthy of having a conversation over. Just because your husband says something doesn't mean you have to respond. If it's something that you feel needs to respond, then you need to go through the previous steps. I do wanna highlight one very important thing. Don't feel badly that you have feelings in a relationship. We often have feelings, even strong feelings. The flip side of love is anger, frustration,
maybe even hate sometimes. It's not because you don't care about your husband deeply, it's because you care about your husband so deeply, that you're frustrated with these opinions and maybe you're even turned off by them. And yet, at the same time, it's important to keep our emotions in balance, to make sure that our emotions are appropriate and that they're guided by our intellect, so that we could have a healthy and fulfilling marriage.
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