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“You are not the person I married.”
Ever felt like that? Join the club. When you and your spouse were courting, the tendency is to idealize each other. You would gush over your beloved, and if he or she has any flaws, it would be the farthest thing in your mind.
Fast forward to your marriage. The “perfect” partner is showing some cracks. Reality either slowly dawns on you or hits you like the proverbial ton of bricks. Disillusionment sets in. If you are the wife, you thought you married Clark Kent, thinking that he is really you-know-who. Then you discovered that your hubby is just that: Clark Kent. No super-heroics. Bummer. (It’s beyond this article to talk about severe cases such as the husband turning out to be a wife-beater. In that case, the woman thought she married Clark Kent, only to discover that he’s really Lex Luthor.)
I am talking about the disillusionment of unmet expectations. It is hardly life-threatening, but, if left unchecked, letdowns tend to suck the vitality of a marriage. For example, a wife expects the husband to be the spiritual leader of the family, only to find out that he has a lukewarm attitude towards the faith. Or a husband expects the wife to be a consummate homemaker, only to find out that she is really burara (slovenly).
You may have your own beef with your spouse. But the sentiment is basically the same: What happened to the person I thought I had married?
There are two basic approaches to deal with this kind of disillusionment. One is to grin and bear it, perhaps even spiritualizing it as “showing grace”. But if, deep down, the spouse’s flaw is getting into our nerves, the resentment will rear its ugly head sooner or later. The other is to attack the problem head-on, often by nagging. (To be fair to wives, husbands nag, too. Although I make it sound more like a fix-it lecture.)
What to do? Here are what I find useful for my own marriage with Lucy.
Celebrate what does not disillusion you. It is the half-full or half-empty glass thing. While it is human nature to be fixated on the negative, let us train ourselves to spot the positive. I thank God to have a gracious wife who embraces my weaknesses and appreciates my strengths. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t call my attention on what I have been doing wrong. Even then, I choose to believe it is for my own good.
Just a few days ago, she told me, “I know of a husband who loves to eat meat and goes into a tantrum when the wife serves veggies for dinner. You are different. You eat the veggies I serve. Thank you for not giving me a hard time.” She could have nagged – I mean, lectured on the nutritional superiority of veggies, but what she actually did was to make me feel like a hero whenever I chomp on the steamed broccoli. Do you think I will eat more veggies? You bet.
Convey grace to the disillusions you cannot resolve. I am active with Toastmasters, a global organization that helps people become better communicators. As you can imagine, I find myself lecturing Lucy on correct grammar and pronunciation, the need for unambiguity, or letting me know that she is about to change topic.
For example, when I am driving Lucy to work and my cellphone receives a text message, she would read the message to me without first telling me who is the sender. This irks me, because I would be befuddled over what the message means if I don’t know the sender is. So I would “lecture” her on the importance of context to put me in a proper frame of mind. But my deeper irritation was: What happened to the sharp communicator that I thought she was when we got married?
Such “lectures” led to spats. It’s not that she didn’t like correction, it’s more of my tone. I realized that I made her feel less as a wife and more like a fifth-grader. I demanded efficiency (saying it right the first time) and she craved spontaneity (speaking freely without fear of being criticized).
So what did I do? I gave her space to say things that way she does. When I feel the urge to lecture her, I try to restrain myself. So the next time she reads a text message without identifying the source, I let her finish then ask her who the texter was and read the message again. What I am really doing is letting go of the idolatry of perfect communication. After all, I married a wonderful woman, not a Toastmasters speech project.
Channel the disillusion into a pursuit of God. Years ago, I came across a powerful insight: God allows unmet desires so that we will not settle for this world, but rather seek Him who satisfies the deepest longings of our hearts.
At the root of disillusionment is the demand to be happy. The concept of a “soul mate” raises unrealistic expectations. One example is when a man proposes to his girlfriend: “Marry me and make me the happiest person in the world.” Also, a radiant bride may be marching down the aisle and (in her mind) towards a lifetime of bliss.
Trouble begins when you demand your spouse to make you happy but he or she doesn’t deliver. But when we are drawing our satisfaction from God, it is not a question of, “Why isn’t my spouse making me happy?” but rather, “How can I share my happiness with my spouse?”
The solution is to base our self-worth not in being married, but in being a child of God. We are reminded of the tremendous goodness of God, which in turn fuels thanksgiving. We are free to celebrate the positive and extend grace to our less-than-perfect spouse. Seen from that perspective, we accept disillusionment, not passively as a part of life, but eagerly as a pointer to an even more glorious marriage, that with our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 5:25-27, Rev. 19:7-9).
Conclusion. Have you noticed I titled this article as “The Dis-illusioned Spouse”, with a hyphen on the adjective? That is deliberate, because we harbor the illusion of a perfect spouse. But as we learn to accept our spouse as he or she really is, warts and all, we let go of such an illusion. We become, so to speak, dis-illusioned.
The alternative is to cling to that illusion, continue to demand perfection and add more stress to the marriage. It is downright unfair to our spouse who, chances are, has his or her share of disillusionment with you. I love Rick Warren’s quip to husbands: “Do you know why you have problems in your marriage? Because you married a sinner… and she married a bigger one!”
It is far wiser, not to mention far happier, to base our satisfaction on God, to learn how to live with our spouse’s shortcoming and to celebrate the positive. When that happens, you will realize that you did marry the person you thought you married: an unspeakably precious gift from God.
Nelson T. Dy is an author and speaker on career, relationships and spirituality issues. He has written ten books to date, including How to Mend a Broken Heart, The Honeymoon Never Ends, and How Do I Know “The One”? For more of his insights, visit his website www.nelsontdy.com.
He and his wife, the wonderful Lucy Cheng Dy, have been married for 15 years.
