What happens when marriage partners experience personal growth at different rates? Four important things that can keep this from stressing your marriage.
When one marriage partner develops talents and skills faster than the other, the relationship may seem out of balance. Feelings of "growing apart" may arise, feelings which seem to threaten the security of the marriage. If one spouse isn't interested in growing or changing at all, the other spouse can worry if they are still "right" for each other.
Actually, this is a normal marriage situation. Two human beings, rarely, if ever, grow in the same area, at the same rate, at the same time--whether physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Different growth rates don't have to add unusual stress to a marriage.
Here are four important things you can do, if you are concerned about the lack of growth in your spouse.
1. Accept. No matter what feelings of imbalance are stirred up in your marriage by the disparity of growth, accept your spouse as he or she is. Drop all campaigns to manipulatively change them. If someone used those same tactics on you, would you want to change?
- Paradoxically, acceptance is the best tool you have in aiding your spouse. Dr. Thomas Gordon, the Nobel nominee and Effectiveness Training guru wrote: "When a person feels that he is truly accepted by another, as he is, then he is freed to move from there and to begin to think about how he wants to change, how he wants to grow, how he can become different, how he might become more of what he is capable of being."
Nagging brings shame. Only love and acceptance give people the power to grow.
2. Invite. If you are making great strides in, say, physical fitness while your spouse is not, invite him to join you. Tell him that you'd like to find at least one physical fitness thing you can do together. Why? Because you love his company.
Tell your wife that you'd like for her to attend this lecture with you, because you want to know what she thinks about it. Because it's important to you to know what she thinks.
Invitations must be given graciously and honestly. They must emphasize the value of the other person. And you must always give your spouse the right to refuse.
3. Play up the common denominator. It's human nature to focus on the two or three irritating differences in a marriage and then ignore the fifteen things that are going well. Focus on, and enjoy, those areas of life in which you are at the same level of interest, the same level of understanding. If growth is needed in these areas, discuss how you can grow in them together.
4. Be Savvy. Be Humble. Be savvy enough to realize that all human beings experience personal growth at different rates. Be humble enough to realize that there may be an area in which your spouse feels you are the one lagging behind.
For ideas on personal growth, see: How are you growing today?
