Marriage Pearl # 1: Always Give a Generous Interpretation of Your Spouse’s Behavior

This is an important one and often difficult to understand and accomplish. 

I’m NOT saying if your spouse is lying, cheating, or abusive to excuse the behavior! 

Au contraire… if that is happening you need to reach out to a local resource and get support and help. 

What I AM saying is in day to day life interpret what your spouse is doing in a generous way that keeps them in a good light in your thinking. 

Here is a real life example from when Steve and I were dating…

Yes, this goes back that far for me that is why it is number 1 on my list. 

Steve and I were dating and not even engaged yet, he had come to visit me in Ohio and my church was making a float for the 4th of July parade in town.  I was excited to have him come with me to work on the float and meet the folks I was in relationship with and to have them meet him.  We got there and there was a flurry of work going on.  We were assigned tasks and I jumped right in. 

Steve on the other hand was seemingly distracted and not really focused on what we were assigned to do.  He went off to the side by himself and was focused on something, but I didn’t know what. 

I was thinking in my mind thoughts that were not generous towards him- What is he doing?  Why isn’t he engaging?  You see I really wanted everyone to think well of him and that he was a hard worker, all in, and such…

I was feeling frustrated with him because he wasn’t doing what I was doing or what I thought I wanted him to be doing. 

But honestly, he didn’t know these folks and he had told me previously that working on a parade float wasn’t something he was real jazzed about doing.

As I tossed around mentally all these degrading thoughts he walked over to me with his hand closed. 

He offered me his closed palm and when he opened it there was a tiny, intricate, delicate pink heart he had cut out from the float material.  He said he was thinking about how much he loved me and had created it for me. 

This caused all those thoughts I had built on a scaffolding of nothing to tumble and become dust. 

Here I was judging him and feeling such disappointment when he was thinking of me in a most loving and generous way. 

Ever since then I have learned that whatever I think is going on is through my filter and I need to learn to be generous in my interpretations of his behaviors.

Being generous in your thinking isn’t something that comes quick and easy…at least not for me! 

Like me, you may have had to train your brain to stop, pause, and engage in generous thinking.

I promise you, it is worth the effort!