Is work more important than our marriage?

Nowadays, it is common for the two spouses to work, and most of the time they spend more time at work than together at home. We live in a demanding society that puts pressure on the spouses: education for our children, the load from the companies we work for, the desire of having more, etc…

In fact, we spend at least one third of our day at work. Our co-workers sometimes become our confidents, and there is more communication with them than with our spouses. Little by little our chats with our spouses are shorter and shorter, and sometimes we even feel more comfortable with our co-workers than with our spouses. The lack of dialogue with our spouses will eventually take its toll. All of a sudden small problems or differences that could have been easily solved by sitting down and talking it out become major problems. We start complaining that our spouses don’t understand us. Attitudes of pride become the norm, and words that we didn’t want or didn’t mean to say slip through our lips. Little by little we are fertilizing the soil that will produce the fruit of our divorce.

The scenario described above is quite common in our places of work. Our lack of spiritual maturity makes us easy prey of unscrupulous people who will try to become the answer to our problems. Some will want to provide a shoulder for us to cry on, but usually they have hidden intentions. Others will give the wrong advice due to their own ignorance or hidden agendas. They’re not happy, so they don’t want others to be happy either. Sometimes these kind of people even helps create the problems we have at home. I have seen 10, 20, 30 years old marriages come to an end for silly reasons, but more often than not, it’s because of an affair. It is unfortunate but most of us in the heat of a moment will give up the most for the least. I have met people who will stop at nothing to get what they want. They will destroy families, and they will leave small children without a parent. Some of the affected people, the more passionate ones, will even turn to deadly solutions. I have read of horrendous crimes committed by people who were betrayed by their spouses.

The media plays an important role influencing the behavior of people. We see movies, TV shows, songs, articles, magazines, and books that are constantly feeding our senses with the wrong message. They praise, justify and even motivate people to do the wrong things. We are living in a society where all the wrong things are normal and good. Even more, having an affair in many circles has become part of their status. And, while some stand on solid principles, and say no to the excesses of modern society, they become everyone’s byword, and they sharpen their eyes against them.

Companies, also, have to be blamed. Their demands on their employees’ time is beyond reason. Company owners, CEOs, and managers simply don’t care - it is not of their concern what happens in their employees’ lives. All that is important is their bottom line - by far, in comparison to other generations, I would venture to say this one is the most selfish. It seems that because of their obsession with today’s dollar, they are forgetting about tomorrow’s dollar. A society without healthy families won’t produce consumers, which is what they want.

Last but not least is our own blindness, our lack of reasoning to distinguish right from wrong, and our flesh fragility to indulge in every desire that satisfies our senses. This keeps us from discerning the message of the media, and to raise our voice and demand more respect for us at work. We are willing to destroy our families, our children, our marriages and ourselves to have, in instead of to be.

It is time to wake up and not swallow everything that we are fed with. It is time to defend our marriages, our families, and our society. We need to open our eyes because we are losing our children to drugs and all kind of vices. We are bringing up an interiorly sick society, and we are being uprooted of important values, because we are being taught that having is more important than being. We need to spend time with our spouses and with our children. We can never stop our dialogue with them. If both spouses don’t need to work they shouldn’t. We’re in desperate need to respect our relationships and our commitments with those we have married and the children we have procreated.

Seven pillars for a better marriage

Everyone wants to have a happy life; it is a desire that beats in every heart. Most of us are truthful when we pledge our love to someone. We truly want our relationships to work; we want to make ours the words at the end of every fairy tale “and they lived happily ever after”. So, if this is what we all want, why don’t we achieve it? Why is it so elusive for most of us? Sometimes it seems that we are always running uphill and happiness downhill. We see others happy, or at least, we believe they are; as they say “the neighbor’s grass is always greener”

Before we proceed we need to establish that happiness is an interior state that is achieved with hard work. Contrary to popular believe, the possession of material things doesn’t bring about true happiness to a person. Today’s society has an abundance of material possessions like no other generation has had, yet we see people suffering from depression, they are always bored and suicidal rates are higher every year. I mentioned in another article that we are taught to be egocentric; everyone and everything has to revolve around us, we want, we want and we want, because of this, we have forgotten how to give ourselves.

Usually, the greatest changes in society begin with the change of a person, so let’s become one of those who change one’s surroundings. The interior state of happiness, so desired by all, is within everyone’s reach, but certain pillars have to be built to provide a solid support for it: wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, goodness, and care for love.

Let’s look at each one of these pillars, to be able to get a better understanding of them, in order to apply them in our lives. I want to start from the last one to the first one.

1. Care for love: most of us don’t really know the true meaning of this precious word, because it has been so abused and misused. It is normally associated with sex and desires. Love is a sentiment that finds its support on good thinking process and educated feelings. When mind and heart are working together, these two bring about the true meaning of love. We hear most people say “follow your feelings” or “follow your instincts”, but we cannot live our lives this way. Feelings alone are deceiving and instincts have to follow reasonable discernment. Love is the true essence of life, is life itself. Most of us have read or heard these words “God is Love”. If we really pay attention to what we have just said, it’s going to help us look at love in a whole different perspective.

If we say that love is life itself; we have to care for love, for without true love we are dead, we might be biologically alive, but spiritually dead. We have to respect love, we have to care for it, but we cannot go against it, we cannot manipulate it, we cannot abuse it, etc…

It is important to get a clear understanding of love to be able to build on the other pillars, so, when we face the hard battles ahead of us, in our pursuit of happiness, we won’t dismay. We’ll know what we are fighting for.

2. Goodness is what helps us relate to others, to give them the rights, the help, the understanding, the value, the time, the love, the forgiveness and the support that we want for ourselves.

3. Knowledge: I want to look at this word in its spiritual sense. Knowledge is spiritual science. It’s learning to evaluate things, situations, people, words, and feelings in their true content and nature. When we do this, it is very difficult to make a mistake and it is going to help goodness flow naturally through us. Knowledge helps us examine other’s actions and words in their true dimension, and it will keep us from making the wrong assumptions, which normally split families and break up relationships.

4. Strength: we have to learn to endure through difficult times. To win a war we have to fight many battles, and most likely we are going to lose some battles, but we have to stay focused on our goal. We have to get up and learn from our mistakes, this is going to help us plan a different strategy. We’re still going to have fights with our spouses, as well as misunderstandings, wrong attitudes, and offensive words, but we have to come to ourselves and not get desperate. Nothing changes overnight, and everything is a process. It took years to become what we are, and it’s going to take time to change, but we are defending our love and happiness.

Someone told me a true story of man who was having some difficult times with his wife, and he was always blaming her for all the problems they were having. Does this sound familiar? All of a sudden he disappeared. Some years later he finds the man on the street, they began to talk, and after a while he asks the question, "So, how are you doing? Are you still with your wife or did you get divorced?" He said, "We got divorced, and I remarried." My acquaintance asked, "Are you happy now? The man said, "Same hell, different demon."

Most people think that the best way to solve a problem is running away from it - that’s the world’s mentality. We hear: get divorced, find someone else. With those words, we are putting the entire blame on the other, and we are not assuming any fault of our own. As far as I know, it takes two to tango. If we never quit for what we consider important, then why should we quit for the most important thing of all: love, and the happiness that comes with it.

5. Counsel: I’d also like to look at this word in its spiritual sense. True counsel is the capacity to hear the reasoning that comes from these other two pillars: understanding and wisdom. Understanding is going to help us view the problem in front of us, dissect it, see the pros and cons, and reach a conclusion. Wisdom is going to help us apply those conclusions in the best way and at the best time.

6. Understanding: we have more or less explained what understanding is, in the previous pillar. We can add that to be able to grow in our understanding, we need a higher level of spiritual maturity, and that higher level can only be provided by God. But, we can say that it is learning to see people, things, and problems beyond our human capacities. We have to transcend to our spiritual realm. It is looking at everything from the inside, but keeping the objectivity.

7. Wisdom is feeling complete, is knowing when to do things, when to keep quiet, when to speak, and how to say things. Wisdom is letting love dictate our lives, is letting love be our center. As long as we let love at the center of our lives, we are going to be happy, and we are going to feel interiorly unified.

To begin the process we have to sit down and reflect on our reality. We have to be honest with ourselves, and we cannot continue blaming everything and everyone for our problems and short comings. We need to assume responsibility for the problems we currently have, and if necessary we need to write them down. We must understand that we cannot attack all of our problems at the same time. We have to measure our strengths, determine our virtues, and write them down. Once we know our weaknesses and strengths, we have to plan a strategy, and it is always better to start with the easiest one. The savor of victory will help us walk through the most difficult ones.

I plan to expand on each one of these pillars, but I wanted to put some food on your plate, so you, the reader, can start working on your new, happy and successful life and marriage.

Men and women, the perfect complement

Almost all relationships start with things that two people have in common. At this early stage hardly anyone pays attention to the positive and negative differences they have, and since society teaches us to be egocentric, we are concerned with the things we like. It is later, when we finally commit, that we begin to pay attention to our differences. Since we are egocentric we see those differences as a problem, because we want things our way. We make a mistake pretending to always have it our way - this attitude blinds us and keeps us from seeing the benefits of being different.

In the article “More than spouses, family and friends,” I write that we need to be different in order to complement each other. Today’s society keeps on hammering that we are equal, but while we are equal in value as humans, we are also different. Our differences begin in our mother’s womb, as that’s how God wanted it.

We are allotted by God different attributes to be able to complement each other, because if we were given the same characteristics we would not be able to conform as a couple. Anyone can perceive that men and women think different, feel different, behave different and do things differently. It is absurd to pretend that we are equal in those regards.

Hence, it is because of these differences that we can complement each other. The biggest mistake that couples make is to try to compete with one another. If the woman is good at organizing things, and the man is good at keeping the budget of the household, it is obvious that one’s weakness has to be covered by the other’s strength.

With this simple example, we can see that our physical, biological, mental, emotional and spiritual differences can help us become the perfect complement for one another. There is nothing in any of these areas that is repetitive, because even if spouses are good at the same thing, they are each going to approach it in a different way. Two ways of handling, viewing, feeling and doing things have to be taking into consideration to determine the best way to proceed.

The reality is that the common grounds we had at the beginning of our relationships should become the building blocks of stronger families. We should start taking advantage of our differences. The other’s positive differences should help us come out of our short comings, and the negative differences should help us grow in our virtues.

Most people think that the differences between men and women are irreconcilable, and because they put such emphasis in those differences, they keep on deepening the gap, and truly believing we can never understand each other. Yet, those differences are precisely what make us perfect for one another. To understand this we have to stop thinking at a human level and move to the spiritual level. We have to truly believe that God could not make a mistake, because if He did, then He would not be God.

Men and women should be taking advantage of the strengths of one another, in order to build a better society for all of us. However, the sad reality is that each of us is losing, and that the true sense of family has gone astray. Society is in crisis.

In order to turn things around we have to recover our spiritual identity: a woman is a daughter, a wife, a mother and a friend, and a man is a son, a husband, a father and a friend. We both are creatures of the same God who calls us to be one. To move with authority in these different roles that we play as humans we have to come to ourselves. For the most part, today’s society lives on its physical senses, instead of its inner capacities.

The contents of what has been said in this article is more in depth, but we will be expanding on this topic as we evolve with this blog, so stay tuned.

More than spouses, family and friends

When we started our relationships with our current spouses, we saw them as strangers who we met at some point in our lives. We fell in love with them and eventually married them. There are many reasons to support this reasoning: we came from different backgrounds and biological families, social statuses and education levels, races, and many times, different countries.

Hence, it is unlikely that we could have looked at our spouses as family, but the fact of the matter is, we were always family. Most of us believe in the existence of God, and most Christian denominations are familiar with Jesus’ prayer “Our Father.” If we have God as the common Father to all of us, it is obvious that we are part of a spiritual family, which goes beyond our biological ties.

Years back, I remember seeing a movie called “Sleeping With The Enemy." This movie portrayed a reality that we see every day - spouses making their lives miserable - and how subjugating, enslaving relationships can become abusive in many areas of our lives.

More often than not, humans find ways to feel better and superior than others. This attitude blinds us and keeps us from looking at the big picture. We don’t see others as family, but rather as obstacles, as competition, and many times, as enemies.

When we begin a relationship, we tend to be more physical than any other thing. Therefore, we pay very little attention to the virtues and defects of our couples, which is a big mistake. As years pass by, we begin to realize that physical attributes are not enough to build a marriage. The couple that pledged to each other eternal love, respect, obedience and mutual support suddenly develops amnesia. Those wonderful vows become just words that had to be said in order to be married.

Does this mean that friendship is now impossible? Not at all. Everything is possible for those who are willing to save their marriages, their families and themselves.

For spouses to be for each other what they were created to be, they need to wake up to the reality that we are more than just flesh, and that we are not equal. We are different physically, biologically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Only people who are different can complement each other, and this is one of the biggest secrets that we have to understand in order to walk towards a better marriage. Men and women were created to be the perfect complement for each other. If we understand the depth of our spiritual realm, we’ll understand that that person who apparently was a stranger, and that came into our lives, sometimes out of nowhere, is part of our spiritual family.

Consequently, it is possible for spouses to feel as family and to become friends.