Selfish in Marriage
Some days I want to be selfish. Some days I don’t want to think about anyone but me. Some days I don’t want to do what I know I should do. Some days I don’t feel like being loving. It’s on these days, I have a choice. I have a choice of how I want my life to go. It’s on these days I am making strategic decisions about my love life. Decisions on how I love and receive love.
I can let my feelings guide me or I can choose to continue to do the next best thing one decision at a time.
In marriage we always have a choice.
We can make decisions that improve our relationships or allow misguided feelings to send us on a self-indulgent chase. Looking to pad our lives with imposters in which we think will give us what we long for.
Imposters disguised as love.
~When the coworker asks you for coffee after work and deep inside you know this could be the beginning of an inappropriate relationship. “Maybe he will listen to me and give me the attention I seem to be missing in my marriage?”
~When your feelings are hurt by your spouse and you feel like retreating because “they never seem to care.”
~When you are disappointed because he didn’t do that one thing you really think he should have. I mean, “he should know,” right?
~When you really want to be self-serving and selfish but there’s a fork in the road where you can choose to consider your spouse first. Or not.
All of these choices disguised as fake love would in actuality be pushing love away.
When we choose to push love away we are rejecting what God has designed for us. We reject God’s greatest gift of love.
Marriage teaches us to be more like Jesus.
We have a choice, we can allow our marriages to mold us and form us into people who love unconditionally, forgivingly, and completely. Just like how God loves us.
~When we learn how to be selfless in marriage we are becoming more like Jesus.
~When we learn how to put another before ourselves we are allowing God to mold us to His image.
~When we learn to love unconditionally it is then we are allowing love in and giving love the way our Heavenly Father intended.
When we look at the life and ministry of Jesus Christ we see a life of service.
Mark 10:45 tells us, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
When we sign up for marriage—until death to us part, vowing to love, honor, and cherish, in good and in bad—we sign up for a life of service.
“The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”
-1 John 2:6
There are few greater places in which we can carry out this command more fully than in our marriage relationships.
Love as Jesus loved.
Marriage can be our teacher, if we allow it to.
Heavenly Father, help me to love as You love. On the days where I don’t feel like loving my spouse give me the courage and strength to do what I know is best. Guide me to live my life in a way that not only honors You but honors those around me. Help me to serve with a full heart free from resentment or offense. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Lucille Williams is the author of From Me to We and The Intimacy You Crave: Straight Talk about Sex and Pancakes. Subscribe to LuSays today and get weekly encouragement.
