When personalities clash in marriage
It is already a given that majority of friction in marriages comes when personalities clash. We know this all too well. Our being in a marriage where one is a process person (the hubby) and the other is an action person (me) constantly affirms this truth to us. And the difference does not end there. To say that we need to accept our spouse as they are is one thing. To choose to do this on a daily basis is another. And as my husband and I approach our tenth anniversary before the year ends, we can only say that while we might not yet be experts at it, we are actually doing better by the day. Yay! :-)
We each have a patterned way of responding to life in general. It gets magnified in a major way when one's response to a circumstance is different from the way we would. Frustrations arise. A scene that is all too common, for all of us, I believe. Not just in marriages, as a matter of fact. We need to know that personality traits have both strengths and weaknesses. One of the keys for a marriage to work is to make the most of the difference in our personalities by maximizing our respective strengths and learning how to minimize our weaknesses. BE A TEAM WITH YOUR SPOUSE. I might not be very good at this just yet – since I was never a very patient person, to begin with. But believe me when I say, I am now able to suck it up and let go, for the most part. Putting myself side by side with my otherwise phlegmatic husband makes me every bit a Type-A Personality.
Looking at Romans Chapter 12:4, "For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function," we are reminded that God has uniquely created us. Our different personalities allow for us to be good at different things. Imagine how boring our world would be if we all are good at the same thing! Our uniqueness is what makes us special. In our marriage, this is something that I have learned to rejoice about. God's plan of bringing me and Jeff together is His perfect way of telling me that He wants me to be a better person. My husband balances me out like no one else. It's basically like looking at the difference of our personalities as glass half full. And when it brings about clashes, at the end of the day, we move right on to being reminded that as different as we are from the other, we remain to be one team. :-)
