Differences

My wife and I have been married for eight years. For some of you reading, marriage is way out in the distance, so that sounds like a long time. For some of you, the statement probably falls in the, “Oh, how cute,” category, like when you hear a baby try to say “grandma” for the first time. For me, eight years means long enough to learn some things, and long enough to know I still have plenty to learn.

This post isn’t actually about marriage though. It’s about a lesson I’ve learned from marriage that is applicable to life on any level. The lesson is this: It isn’t all about me.

Profound, right?

When you go into marriage, you go in thinking about the way your spouse makes you feel, the goosebumps they give you, the amazing family you’ll have together, and on and on. You have the “honeymoon” phase. You have infatuation. Then, somewhere along the way, reality starts to set in. The person you married isn’t whatever picture of perfection you had made up in your head. They don’t answer your every beck and call. It turns out the person you married is — wait for it — a person. They’re a person with their own thoughts and emotions and past experiences. They have their own expectations, which quite often differ from yours. They interpret statements and actions and just about everything differently than you, and they can’t read your mind.

So you clash. You clash because you’re two separate people with two separate thought patterns.

Then you have a choice to make. Am I going to respect this person? Am I going to love them and learn from them and try to help them learn from me too? Am I going to see the validity in what they’re saying even though it’s at odds with what I’m saying? Am I going to bear with them even when I think they’re wrong? After all, that’s what I hope they would do for me. Or am I going to be an authoritarian? Will it be my-way-or-the-highway? Will I bail? In short — will I build a strong marriage or will I end in divorce?

The truth is that we would all love to always have our way. But we live life with other people. And guess what, those people want to have their way too. We tend to want grace and understanding shown toward us, but we tend to show disdain or mockery to those who disagree with us.

This isn’t just in marriage, it’s everywhere. Look at your Facebook. It could be any subject from religion to politics to whether or not Chipotle is the best fast food place (hint: it is). There will be much less conversation than there will be volatile arguments and name-calling. Why? Because we don’t want to extend grace, we just want our way. We don’t want to understand why you feel the way you do, we just want you to see why we’re right. That doesn’t work in marriage, and it doesn’t work in life.

I have a friend who recently adopted an atheistic worldview. What’s amazing to me is the amount of Christians who comment on his posts as if he shouldn’t be talking about his belief (or lack of belief – however you want to word it). They themselves will post about their faith, will post Bible verses, will post praises to God, touting their beliefs for the world to see — and there’s nothing wrong with that. But now they see somebody doing the same thing, but their belief happens to be different, and it causes an uproar. Why? Because many would rather degrade than try to understand. Many don’t care why, they just care that there is a difference.

Friends, this outlook breaks down. It kills relationships, it ruins community, it builds walls that hold people at a distance from each other. I believe that there really are things that are right and wrong. I believe that there really is absolute truth. But discarding somebody else’s view because it doesn’t match mine achieves nothing. And wanting somebody to respect my view while I show no respect to them actually does damage. It shows them that I don’t value them. It shows them that they are a second class citizen to me.

Being understanding doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing.

Disagreeing doesn’t necessarily mean being disrespectful.

I remember when I found out my wife didn’t think Netflix on the couch at night counted as “quality time.” To me, why wouldn’t it? We’re together, spending time… Quality time. To her, not the same. I could either listen to her, learn from her, and grow our relationship, or I could dismiss her, slowly break her heart and show her that I didn’t value her, and eventually lose her through divorce or (even worse) through watching her slowly become a different person because of coping with constantly pouring out love to me and receiving none in return.

When you encounter people you disagree with, when you encounter friends whose decisions baffle you, when you encounter people who really are wrong, and when you encounter people who like to point out how really wrong you are, remember: it’s not all about you. Our lives are meaningless without the people around us. They bring the value and the purpose and joy, even if they also bring the disappointment and the pain. Learn from the people around you. And even if you don’t agree with them, respect them and care for them, just like you would want them to do for you.