Ep. 09: You Can Have A Happy Marriage Even When …

Joyful Love

Let’s be honest here. Sometimes our partners can irritate us to no end.

The way they load the dishwasher. Their unique routines. The way they chew, talk, don’t talk, comb their hair, the job they choose, or any other number of things.

Now they weren’t so irritating in the beginning. Heck, we might have even liked these unique differences about them. However, over time, we start finding them annoying and irritating. And our brains offer us thoughts like, “If he would change, I would be happier.” Or even, “The way they are – is holding me back in life.”

And since our happiness is now in their control … we try really hard to get them to change who they are and ‘fix’ themselves faster. Because “YO! My happiness is at stake!”

But all this does is make our partners feel like we’re parenting them. And parenting your partner is the fastest way to killing connection. It’s the quickest way to making marriage feel miserable and NOT fun.

And beyond that, it doesn’t help. Criticism and talking till we’re blue in the face doesn’t change them any more than their criticism and trying to fix us would cause us to change.

So what’s the answer? What do we do about this irritation that creeps into 99.99% of all relationships? We start with taking back control of our own emotions. We don’t give them the job of managing our feelings!

Listen to Episode 9 of Joyful Love to hear the things that irritated me about Cris and what I did about it!