Pride In Marriage

I really liked and appreciated what Goddard (2007) shared in his book about having pride within our marriage. He talked about how in many marriages, spouses blame each other for the problems that they are having. If they are having a disagreement, or a fight about something, they will blame the other for being selfish and not bending to each other's will. Or if their spouse does something that they don't like, they use that as a way to find fault in their spouse and only continue to blame them further. Eventually, their own prideful thinking rewrites and overrides all of the good and happiness in a marriage and replaces it with blame and contempt. He continued on saying that we must let go of pride, if we want our marriages to live and thrive and for us to find joy in them. 

In a sense, I have been guilty of this as well. I get really upset with my husband for not doing, what I feel, is his part. He works hard at his construction job and comes home tired. And I understand and acknowledge the fact that he does. However, after he comes home, he just plays video games for the rest of the day. I complain to him because I feel like he is being lazy and just leaves everything else to me. Not only do I have to do homework, but I also have to take care of the baby, and clean up the apartment which is usually his mess. When we get into "discussions" about it, we essentially blame each other and talk about how we both do a lot and how the other isn't appreciating that. Something that I want to try to do this week, is to let go of my pride and entitlement to my husband's time when he gets home. Instead, just show how much I appreciate him and not look at or see how I may have done more than he has. One way that I plan on doing that is telling him at the end up of the day how much I appreciate everything he did. And list off everything that he did while thanking him so that he knows that I do notice the things that he does and appreciate them individually rather than give a blanket thanks.