Friday, June 03, 2005
This Will Make A Marriage Work?
My wife sent me this post from Jeff the Baptist. (No hint implied) Jeff cites a psychological study.
Psychologists believe that what they are observing in couples who endorse these and similar sentiments are strongly selective memories that ignore inevitable negative events over the course of marital history. Maybe a distorted view of your marriage that emphasizes the positive and forgets the negative is crucial to accounting for who stays and who flees when it comes to relationship endurance.Jeff presents quite a good rant on this, but within says
Might I suggest that this is not a case of forgetfulness or delusion that allows couples to stay together but love allowing for forgiveness and acceptance.Jeff is, I think, half right there. Love and forgiveness play a key role, but so does repentance and trying not to make the same mistake twice. All of my friends that have divorced were very loving and forgiving -- what pushed them over the edge was seeing the same mistakes made over and over and over again. Forgiveness demands a price -- cheap grace will not suffice.
