Real Life Marriage: Doing Love Wrong...Again!

I want to love my husband well, really, I do! I rarely accomplish it, but I try, and I thought I was giving it a decent shot. But recently, I realized I was doing it all wrong, again. I was trying to love my husband based on what I defined as love, and that didn't equal love to him.

A lot of my understanding of love comes from my family of origin. My parents were far from perfect, but loved each other and us kids well. Therefore, both consciously and subconsciously, I have tried to imitate my parents' style of love in my love for my husband. Spoiler alert: My husband grew up differently than me so he interprets life differently. This means that some of the ways I thought I was showing him love have come across as belittling, servile, or just plain unhelpful, quite the opposite of loving!

I have based a lot of my acts of love based on what I thought it meant to be a good wife. Spoiler alert: My husband doesn't really care what I think a good wife is. I mean, he does to the extent that he cares what I think, but he doesn't care when it comes to feeling loved. He wants me to love him, not my idea of a good wife.

I have tried to love my husband well, but I've been doing love wrong, again. My desires were good, but founded on the wrong premises. I was loving on the premises of what love meant to me, rather than what my husband perceives and needs as love. 

True love is patient. True love is kind. "It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs" (1 Cor 13:4-5, New International Version [NIV]). It is easy to recite this biblical definition of love, and much, much harder to live it. Try as I might, I fail at love, over and over again. Only God loves perfectly. Only through the indwelling Holy Spirit's help can I learn to love better.

Recognizing that I have been doing love wrong again has been painful, incredibly saddening, and incredibly discouraging. But here I am, trying again, praying that I will grow, bring God glory in my attempts at love, and hopefully bless my husband more along the way.