Are you a married couple or married but reading this alone or may be single but hoping to get married someday? It doesn’t matter the category you fall into…
As you know, marriage is a garden you need to nourish and tend for it to bloom and thrive but sometimes, you have wheat and weeds growing together in it. If you however, take out those weeds early enough, you may be able to get away with a lot before things go down south.
There are many weeds that serve as thorns in the flesh of many marriages but this particular weed is one that poses as a disguised threat that if you are not fully alert, could destroy your marriage.
***Marriage Health Alert: “Excellent” marriages are not immune to this threat.
So what is this subtle threat? —The people or married couples you surround yourself with in your marriage.
What?!?
YES.
Many times we have married couples as friends in our marriages but don’t pay attention to the influence they have on us and how that influence impacts our marriages.
The married couples you are close with, go a long way in determining how great or crappy your own marriage is going to be. While observing other couples show affection and love towards each other can encourage or stimulate a couple to do same for themselves, the reverse is also the case.
Related: How To Enjoy Peace In Your Marriage
If you are the type that have surrounded yourself with married couples whose marriages are struggling and failing and all you hear is complaints about how their spouse is not doing this or that, no positivity of any kind but only gloom and doom all day everyday, it’s only a matter of time before that becomes the song in your own marriage as well (except you take precautions to guard your own marriage jealously by engaging and making sure that the opposite of these things are what you say about your own spouse to these friends).
You basically become who you surround yourself with. You become what you hear constantly.
Even if you feel you have the greatest marriage on earth or you are the go- to- person for great marital counsel, but you don’t have other couples whose marriages are doing beautifully well around you to keep you on your toes, your marriage is going to be affected and you are going to struggle.
Misery loves company.
Related: 3 Questions To Ask To Increase Productivity In Your Marriage
By continuing to listen to a barrage of negatives over a period of time, you will begin to see in your spouse the very things you hear others complain to you about in their spouses, even if it’s not there. The effect of this is that, you start to second guess your marriage and the happenings in your own home hoping it’s not the same thing some one had complained to you about that is being exhibited by your spouse.
You unconsciously start to reason and take actions like the people you have surrounded your self with while you question things not worth questioning -“After all, all men are the same or all women are the same. Why is he acting this way? Why is she acting this way?” and other things of that nature.
In the midst of all the negativity you have been exposed to, you simply get caught up while the block is gradually being chipped away from your own marriage wall. You no longer want to put in the effort as you normally would and so you neglect your winning formula because of what someone else has told you.
You may think it can’t happen to you and it can only happen to them. The truth is, the complaints you hear and listen to all of the time sow bad seeds in your heart -whether you realize it or not. You are drained and worn out by the what you hear all the time.
It’s good to be a counsel but it’s better to be a good counsel who is also surrounded by good people.
You cannot afford to be besieged by cynicism and hoodlums in marriage. You need couples who have awesome stories in their marriages despite their challenges; couples who edify you to do better in your own marriage so you can give more to others.
You cannot give what you don’t have.
Listening to constant stories of divorce and woes in other people’s marriages and relationships with no good stories to balance things out for yourself could lead to a martial wreck you never envisaged.
It’s only a matter of time before you start getting easily irritated by the one you say you love the most and taking your spouse for granted.
The worst part is that, you may still remain the good counselor in the eyes and minds of the couples you counsel even if you are struggling with these very same things. And because you never want them to know what is going on in your own home…you guessed it right…you continue to fake it and act like all is well. But it’s only a matter of time before it all spills out in the open.
It’s happened many times too often.
Give good counsel, love on your friends and couples if they are struggling in their marriages.
But in the midst of helping them, avoid the mud so it doesn’t stick on you. Also, surround yourself with mentors and friends with even “better” marriages than what you currently have. There’s always room for more and things can always get better.
Strike a good balance with this, and you will remain charged up and not burnt out in your marriage. Your marriage doesn’t have to degenerate as a result of negative third party influence.
Bonus Tips:
-You don’t have to be a “marriage counselor” for this to happen to your marriage. Having only cold and argumentative couples who are always in a fight as close friends, could land you in the same weedy garden you never intended.
-Marriage retreats help to keep the spark alive in many marriage and prevent the need for counseling in many cases.
-There’s no perfect marriage and no two marriages are the same even if they have similar experiences.
Who are your married couple friends?
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