Appreciating Strengths and Weaknesses
Often people's strengths are also their weaknesses. For instance, if your spouse is a philosopher and not very good at paying attention to detail, you might get annoyed that he was going to do something, pick something up, or get the oil changed in the car and did not. On the other hand, you may have married him precisely because of who he is.
Evaluating Weaknesses as Strengths
Remember you like the philosophical side of him because he brings a bigger picture — perhaps a more spiritual vision to you, your life, and your relationship. When the other side of his personality makes you frustrated, it is of course important to talk together and negotiate how what needs to get done will get done, but at the same time it is important to keep in mind that no one can be everything. Your husband's inattention to detail might be the other side of what you love about him — his focus on the big picture.
Sometimes women who complain that their husbands are not emotional or vulnerable enough admit it was this strength and independence that attracted them to their husbands in the first place when they are asked to explore their feelings about why they married their husbands.
Your spouse might be a procrastinator and you see this as a weakness because it's time to get the taxes done and she has waited until the last minute. The other side of this “weakness” might be her ability to put tasks aside to focus on you or to have fun with your children. When you feel your spouse's weaknesses, ask yourself what you love about her, why you married her, and how she complements you by being different. No doubt, this strength may also be part of what you see as a weakness and annoys you. So talk together about what irks you, but also focus on what you have always loved about your partner.
Don't sacrifice yourself or your relationship for your kids. When partners lose their own interests and become only about their children, they are left with little of themselves and it can be difficult for them to find what they originally loved in each other. You must cultivate intimacy, adult interactions, and learning, even when you have children in your lives.
Working on a relationship, considering what you love about each other, and talking about what bothers you is a lot of work, but can bring great joy. The Torah tells us that it is forbidden to harbor hatred in one's heart; we are commanded instead to confront others with what is bothering us. There is no need to tell your spouse everything that annoyed you at work each day, but when he does say something that bothers you and you have a hard time seeing it as endearing, talk to him about it. Of course, finding the right way to phrase such a conversation is of the utmost importance. Talk about his strengths and how he also has something, the flip side of one of his strengths, that annoys you. Be specific, and don't simply launch into general complaints; that usually leads to an argument.
Making It Work
Remember, you can be the ultimate trusting couple to each other, the only people in the world with whom you both can be completely open about your challenges. This is because you really know and appreciate each other better than anyone else in the world can.
Some couples find that going out on a date, even just for coffee, and making a ground rule to ban certain topics of conversation, such as work, money, and kids, can be very productive. It creates space to allow you to focus on your relationship and each other even in a hectic life.
One of the important prerequisites to having a good relationship and marriage is having become fully “you” first. For many people, psychotherapy is effective because understanding what makes each of us tick then enables us to go outside ourselves and truly be there for someone else. Way before you have any problems in your relationship, think about counseling, therapy, couples therapy, or a retreat for couples where you can talk about how you communicate and what you love about each other and what is hard for each of you about being in your relationship. Couples that do not stay together often have waited too long before finding help.
Spouses must learn to hear each other even when things are not clearly spelled out, while at the same time working toward being able to say what they need. For instance, if one's wife says she is stressed because there is a lot of laundry to do, a husband should not think that he just worked a long day and she does not appreciate it; rather, he should realize that loving means wanting to help, and this is her way of telling him she needs partnership. When two people love each other they are complete partners, and everything involved in building a marriage and a family should be seen as the responsibility of both partners. When both feel they are doing more than their share, the odds are that things are closer to equal. The Talmud says that people who are married to each other are like one person and that — perhaps to equalize the amount of influence spouses have in a relationship — a husband must honor his wife more than he does himself.
