Okay, so there are thousands upon thousands of books focusing on the art of marriage. We are taught how to survive infidelity, how to get the love we desire, how to stay married, and how to communicate in our marriage, to highlight just a few. There are resources at the tips of our fingers, and yet we still struggle. The reason we struggle is because of the ideas each one of us personally carry about relationships. Those ideas didn’t originate from any book, movie or magazine article; they emerged from what we’ve observed about marriage over the course of our lives.
Childhood Marriage Lessons
Our childhood basically equipped us with the tools needed to be successful in life and love. Sometimes they were positive and other times they could have easily led us down a path of destruction. We learned by listening to the adults in our lives and by noticing their behaviors. How they operated in relationships or in their marriage shaped our ideas about how we should show up in our own.
Early on, my mother taught me that women held it down, whether a husband was present or not. Now she never actually said those words, I found them to be true in her actions and how she raised my sisters and me as a single mom. I carried that lesson on in the beginning of my marriage, and it was unproductive. I treated my husband as though he was optional and we both suffered. I had to rethink that idea because it did not generate the results I wanted for my marriage. We argued frequently and I could go days without even speaking to him. The truth was, I needed my husband and desperately wanted my marriage to survive. I had to make some changes in order to prove that.
My Mother Continues to Teach Me
As an adult, I am still learning about marriage from my mom. She is newly married and continues to unintentionally demonstrate lessons on love. Although I’ve been married longer than she has, I still admire her. This time the lesson she’s teaching is how to cater to a spouse. Again, she never ever said those words; I simply observe how my mom treats her husband and how he is made to feel as though he is the priority. Believe me, I am taking notes on this one.
People can enlighten us all day on how to be married, but until we remove those negative childhood beliefs about marriage, we won’t be successful. Our childhood provided examples of what being an adult would entail. Holding down a career, raising children and knowing how to treat a partner, where each takeaways from the adults in our lives. We have to make sure that what we were taught actually benefits our relationship. If the results we witnessed from the adults in our lives were negative, we automatically know it’s an idea we shouldn’t even consider implementing into our own marriage. Lessons come in a variety of ways from various people. We must be smart in deciding which ones we’ll adopt for our love life.
Again, think about who taught you about marriage, what you learned, but more importantly how you are applying it.
BMWK, who taught you about marriage and what did you learn?
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