Accepting Influence and Rejecting Pride (wk 8)

One of John Gottman’s “7 Principles for Making Marriage Work” is allowing your partner to influence you. Specifically, men need practice in the art of sharing power and decisions with their wives. Gottman found that overwhelmingly, women are already pretty good at this, and it’s mainly an issue that men have. However, we all have instances where we are determined to get our own way instead of listening to our spouses. Gottman tells us that you need to understand that “often in life you need to yield in order to win” and that the best way to go about this is being willing to compromise. “You do this by searching through your partner’s request for something you can agree to.” 

 

When we’re unwilling to accept influence from our partner, it all boils down to pride. In the book Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, H. W. Goddard says, “The natural man is inclined to love himself and fix others. God has asked us to do the opposite.” It is so true that in life, and particularly in marriage, it is much easier to see others’ faults instead of our own. It is much easier for me to list all of the little things my husband can do better than it would be for me to list things I can improve upon. 

Goddard reminds us that “any time we feel irritated with our spouses, that irritation is not an invitation to call our spouses to repentance but an invitation to call ourselves to repent. We are irritated because of our own lack of faith and humility.” I love that! In church this last Sunday, our Sacrament meeting topic was “Dealing with Anger.” The speakers talked about how anger is a choice and no one can truly make us angry. It is the same with irritations in marriage. If we find something our spouse does to be irritating, we need to look at ourselves and see if maybe our expectations are too high, or if there is something we ourselves can do to make things better. 

John Gottman mentioned in his book the ever present issue of the toilet seat. Many wives are infuriated with their husband’s lack of interest in putting the toilet seat down. It’s a small irritation, but it’s a major problem! When my husband and I were first married, he pointed out that me having to put the seat down every time was no different than him having to raise it UP every time. I had never thought of this perspective before and ever since then it has never once bothered me when I have to put the seat down. This is an example of being able to accept influence.

President Ezra Taft Benson gave a famous talk titled “Beware of Pride” in April of 1989. He reminds us that “the proud do not receive counsel or correction easily. Defensiveness is used by them to justify and rationalize their frailties and failures…The proud are not easily taught. They won’t change their minds to accept truths, because to do so implies they have been wrong.” In the end, when we refuse to accept our spouse’s influence and see their perspective, we are guilty of the sin of pride. 

Goddard reminds us that if we want to be able to see our partner’s perspective, we need to be humble and repentant. This is the only way that we will be able to get past our natural man tendency to believe only in our own opinions. One really amazing way to get past this is to stop looking for things to correct and instead look for things to appreciate! This can change our entire perspective. Even when we are in a disagreement about something, if we can look for the good, look for the common ground, we are more likely to find a way to compromise. To quote Goddard “Appreciating is more powerful than correcting.”

Gottman found that when a husband is unwilling to be influenced by his wife, there is an 81% chance of that marriage failing! And all because of pride! Of course we should not become a door mat that allows our spouse to walk all over us, but we need to be willing to bring humility and repentance into the relationship, so that pride does not keep us from seeing their perspective and taking others’ opinions into account.