Would you believe that the key to marriage isn’t your relationship with your spouse? Do you know that we all have the same primary vocation regardless of our state in life? The truth is that the key to marriage is that our primary vocation is that of union with the Lord! It’s true! Monks, hermits, religious, clergy, and married people all share the same call to holiness! So, if you are married that means you are called to union with the Lord first and foremost and in the living out of that you receive what you need to live your vocation of marriage with an earthly spouse.
Only the Lord is infinite and in Him our needs to be chosen, intimately known, perfectly valued, protected, and provided for are superabundantly fulfilled. If we aren’t going to Him to receive the fulfilment of those needs, we will be running on empty and turning to our spouse to fill us. What if they are running on empty, as well? Then we are setup for frustration, conflict, and failure. If we look to them to satisfy us instead of the Lord, we are looking to make an idol of them.
Where relationships usually breakdown is in our relationship to ourselves. We read Scripture or spiritual reading, listen to homilies, or talks about the Lord and how He sees us and then we go and relate to ourselves in ways that fly in the face of the fact that we are precious, loved, and have inherent dignity. Then, our relationships to others become really weighty – much weightier than they ought to be – because we are looking for our spouse to tell us enough truth about ourselves to counterbalance the erroneous ways we treat ourselves.
Start each day – even if it’s just taking 5 minutes – turn to the Lord and open those needs of knowing you are chosen by Him, intimately known by Him, that you have more worth in Him than you can begin to imagine, that you are protected and provided for by Him and ask Him to help you relate to yourself in a way that is consistent with those truths. Starting from a place of fullness, then relate to your spouse and see what changes.
May the Lord give you peace!
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