My Story
When I was going to therapy for anger my therapist kept asking me if I had problems in my marriage or with my spouse. I told him I only got mad at my children and that my husband and I had no problems at all.
It wasn’t until I was done with therapy, practicing the anger drills, and studying self-help books that I realized that a lot of my stress and tension came from my relationship with my spouse. I was misreading the source of my stress and taking it out on my children.
We had “no problems” because I was avoiding them and complying with things I didn’t like. Eventually, I learned to be united with my spouse and in turn, my unity with my children improved too. The keys for me were boundaries, communication, intimacy, and making unity my number one priority.
Benefits of Unity
Because of that experience this topic is near and dear to my heart. I believe unity with your spouse and children is the key to a happy and successful life. What I will write is not intended to cover every aspect of how to be one with your spouse and children. These are just a few thoughts that are important to me.
Unity with your spouse and children can be very hard when compulsive anger, fighting, unhealthy communication, addictions, P.T.S.D. or other serious problems weigh on your relationships. These things drain from the good, loving times we share. They make family life bitter-sweet. But this post will teach you how to overcome these hurtful challenges (with the Lord) so your relationships become sweet and you achieve unity with your spouse and children.
Universal Boundaries
A great resource for this topic is the Boundaries series by Townsend and Cloud. Boundaries are rules. They help you have unity with your spouse and children because rules and commandments were put in place to teach us to love ourselves, one another, and God.
Some boundaries are universal or given, like the commandments. People may argue that they are not universal, but when we keep God’s laws good things happen as a natural consequence. The laws of the land you live in are another set of given (or universal) boundaries.
As I started learning about boundaries I hung up a small piece of paper on my fridge to remind me what behaviors my therapist said were not OK. Some of them were things that are so common in society that I thought they were normal and fine, but they are universal boundaries because they are not respectful.
Here are those boundaries: physical– kicking, hitting, shoving, unwanted touching; sound– yelling, screaming, music too loud, tone of voice, ranting, whining; emotional– saying mean things, name calling, unkind words, manipulating, teasing, threatening; manners– interrupting, cussing, not listening, doing for others what they should do for themselves, taking things without permission.
Personal Boundaries
Other boundaries are more individual and we set them for ourselves. It is what we are and aren’t OK with. For example, I know someone that is not OK with people chewing ice around them. Everyone can set their own personal boundaries. The important thing for unity with your spouse and children that we respect their personal boundaries. This can require a lot of self-restraint and maturity. For example, there was a Disney movie that my husband was, personally, not OK with. I respected that enough to not let my children watch it, even when he wasn’t around, until he changed his mind and said it was fine.
It is not our place to convince others to agree with us. Everyone is entitled to their own feelings, attitudes and beliefs, behaviors, choices, values, limits, talents, thoughts, desires, and loves. (Boundaries, Cloud and Townsend) I have that message hanging on the wall in our living room as part of our family rules.
When You are not Using Good Boundaries
Knowing about boundaries doesn’t make a person change overnight (especially if there are compulsive or addictive behaviors involved). Even when we try to have healthy boundaries and be respectful we are going to mess up. But, I have found that when I use the following formula I mess up less and less. The ugly episodes are fewer and farther between until some things disappear altogether and all of it can some day. This process decreases the drains on our relationships and increases our unity with our spouse and children.
- Say sorry to God quickly. I say sorry to God in private prayer right away.
- Determine to do better. I tell God I will try with all my heart and I ask Him to give me grace to help me do it less. I expect progress, not perfection. God expects my whole heart, not perfection.
- Say sorry to whoever was affected. If I yell at one son in front of the other children I may need to apologize to all of them for scaring them or for hurting their brother’s feelings. I tell them I will try my hardest to do it less. They know that is a realistic expectation to hope for. A lot of times I tell them how I could’ve handled it better and that I will try to handle it that way in the future. There are times when an apology can cause further harm. In such cases, skip to step 4.
- Do something to make it right with the person or people I offended. I may give my spouse a massage, play a game with my son, or spend time together. I may decide to give them a day off chores. Whatever it is, I need to feel like we are on good terms. Some of my children are slow to forgive me. I have to respect their unwillingness to receive my love. But, after a while they come around because they see through my actions that I am truly sorry and I mean what I say.
These steps are actually part of repentance and the 12-step addiction recovery program, not word for word. If you deal with any compulsive behavior that you feel you can’t stop, I recommend working the steps.
When Others aren’t Using Healthy Boundaries
This topic needs an entire post. But, basically, let the natural consequences hit them and impose consequences where needed, out of love. We do people a great disservice if we allow them to disrespect us. They are hurting themselves when they hurt others. It is actually helping them to “kick back” somehow.
Unity with your spouse and children cannot happen if you are allowing them to mistreat you. A great resource for this topic is the Boundaries series by Townsend and Cloud.
Boundaries are especially important in families with serious problems like P.T.S.D., mental illness and addictions. Al-Anon literature is very powerful for these families. It teaches them how to let the offender take responsibility for their choices while doing the same yourself. There is so much wisdom in that organization. The principles apply to all problems, not just alcohol.
Forgive
Forgiveness is essential to being united with your spouse and children because we are going to make so many mistakes. It is important that when my husband apologizes, I accept it politely. Sometimes I have accepted his apology and then prayed for God to help me forgive him. I was so tired of the same old thing happening. But, it is important that he keep saying sorry and that I keep supporting him in his efforts to change. (and visa versa) I want the same support, love, and mercy.
I don’t want to sound like the angel in the relationship. I have been the aggressor as many times as my spouse and children. When I started to put these boundaries into practice there were times when I would get upset and my husband would remind me that I needed to calm down before he would keep talking to me. Or he would sweetly call me out on my tone, “Your tone sounds like you are mad.” “You are not talking to me very nicely.” This helped me so much and normally I would say, “Ok, you are right.”
Unity With Spouse and God Above all Else
One day I was praying to know what to do for my children. The Lord spoke to me in my mind through the His Spirit. He said, “Focus on being one with your husband.” This answer was a huge relief to me at the time. I didn’t go away with a checklist of tasks to perform; all I had to do was focus on being one with my husband. I have come to see the wisdom in making unity with my spouse and God my number one focus in life.
Blessings of Unity with Spouse
- If I can be one with my husband, I can be one with my children. Working out conflict with him teaches me to work out conflict with the kids.
- Everything else in life seems to fall into place.
- The children are blessed by our unity because we can council together about them and receive revelation from God through our conversations.
- Happiness in life no matter what else is going on. It is so nice at the end of a hard day with the kids to spend some time connecting with my husband emotionally and physically. I have found that when we are close, no other problem or concern can disturb my peace and contentment with life. I feel like it is him and me against the wind and everything will work out.
How to be One with Your Spouse
- Openness. I used to keep a lot of my concerns about the kids (and life in general) to myself. Not just my concerns, but my dreams too. I think I was afraid of how the conversation would go. I didn’t want it to turn into an argument or for him to negate my thoughts and feelings. But, as we learned to speak to each other with healthy boundaries (through lots of trial and error) we became safe to talk to. We both started opening up. Now I can get his thoughts about my worries for the children and other things. When I am apprehensive to tell him something I make myself do it anyway. Open, frequent communication leads to emotional and intellectual intimacy.
- Another key to unity with my spouse has been physical intimacy. (see my post Tips for a Great Sex Life)
- Finally, learning to compromise revolutionized our marriage. Before we were either happy we got our way or unhappy we didn’t. Half the time we felt like we didn’t have a voice. When our mindset changed to making everyone happy instead of winning, we came up with new and better ideas.
Love Over Rules/Overrules
I used to see the purpose of life as personal development and to prove my obedience to God. The result of this perspective was a lot of focus on myself and on rules. Now I see rules (or boundaries) as a means to an end, not the end themselves. To me, “the end” or the goal of this life is unity with your spouse and children, friends, relatives, and especially with God.
Boundaries, forgiveness and continued effort to be one will eventually help us overcome anger, fighting, unhealthy communication, addictions, PTSD,etc. and be united with our spouse and children. I have come to see personal development as the natural consequence of this effort.
This quote by Joseph Smith is very profound, “By unity of feeling, we obtain power from God.” And, I would add, the greatest satisfaction possible in life.
