Marriage

When we first fall in love we often look at our spouse through rose-colored glasses. We filter out any negatives and focus only on the positive. But when we are mad, we may only see our spouse through what I would call “mud-colored glasses”—we filter out anything positive and only see the negative. We are like attorneys in the discovery process: we set about looking for evidence to prove our case that our spouse is a jerk, or is selfish, or whatever conclusion we have come to in our anger. Then, when the offending spouse does something that vaguely fits our belief we think, “Ah ha! I knew s/he was a jerk!” So we add that bit of evidence in the file for the case we are building and before long we have enough “evidence” to convict them. How easy it is to build this case against our spouse when we can’t see the good!

We have all heard, and probably said, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” at some point in our lives. And that philosophy plays into our marriages when we wait to see if our spouse proves our case. The problem with that belief is that it puts things in the wrong order. The truth is that we see it because we believe it, not the other way around. What would happen in our marriages if we began to believe the best of our spouse and treat them according to our belief?