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Dr. Gottman writes about the need to turn towards our spouses in order to have successful marriages.  All week I have been thinking about the concept turning towards your spouse. In my head I have this picture of physically turning towards Joe by first  pivoting my head followed by the rest of body until I am facing him. What I have come to realize as I see this in my mind is that turning towards Joe requires that I turn away from something else.

Some of these “something elses” are easy to identify and there is no doubt that I should turn away from them.
  • The need to be right in an argument
  • Social Media scrolling
  • The selfish desire to do what I want instead of what anyone else would want
  • The mindless show on TV that only I like

Then there are the “something elses” that maybe I should turn away from at that moment
  • My carefully planned schedule
  • The ever present need to do laundry
  • Even my kids

For a lot of these things timing is everything,  When is it time to turn away from the never ending needs surrounding me to focus just for a little while on the needs of my marriage.

But what I most pondered on this week was the other “something elses,”  The “something elses” that it might seem wrong to turn away from.

About 15 years ago, my friend Chris’s husband left the church.  It’s been a strain on their marriage for a long time, but she loves him, he loves her, and they want to make it work.  Chris is an example of the believers and has always tried to live the gospel in the every aspect of her life. She recently told me that she decided to ask her husband how he felt about some of the religious parts of her life.  Something she had never done before. He expressed how much he hated it when she had the missionaries over for dinner, so she decided to never have them over when he was home. She took down some religious paintings throughout her home, because she realized she didn’t need them to worship God.  Chris told me that she identified things that to her were non negotiable (like wearing her garments) and then tried to turn to her husband on some of the others.

After this super uplifting conversation with Chris, I was left wondering if I would be willing to turn away from good things for the sake of turning towards my spouse.  

Could I?
  • Not have family home evening one night because Joe is exhausted and he just doesn’t feel like he can do it
  • Let him watch a rated R movie with our oldest because he really wants to share it with him and feels it has a good moral
  • Allow him to take the older boys to a Phish concert

Those are all real life scenarios for me.  In some cases, I have turned towards Joe and in other I just couldn’t let go of perceived moral compass.   I’m not sure if I was wrong or right to do so. I would like there to be a set yes or no checklist- a do or do not kind of thing.  Maybe it doesn’t exist because each case and each person is different. And that is why we have to have the spirit- to know what is negotiable and what is not.

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