Let Your Partner Influence You
The 4th principle
of Dr. Gottman’s book “The Seven
Principles Make Marriage Work” is “Let
your partner influence you”. I would like to remind you that this book has
written based on huge amount researches in which he made video typing and
observations of interactions of more than 130 couples during 24 hours. He
continued monitoring these couples during long period of time. According to
Gottman’s research, if a husband is unwilling to share influence with his wife
the chance of the marriage ending in divorce is 81%. Of course, it does not
mean that wives should not share power with their husbands but this is kind of
cultural thing, as Gottman notice, that men in many cases are not aware of this
tendency, how much power they have in a marriage, because evolutionally men
believe that “husband should make all decisions for the family”. In happy
marriages husbands are consulting and influencing by their wives.
I was surprised with my husband’s
perception about this point. During this week in my studies I have activity
“beware of pride”. I filled in a questionnaire about myself and asked my
husband to do the same about me, what are my areas of “pride”. We both gave
similar answers except one – he checked about me “unwillingness to learn from
spouse”. I used to be kind of indecisive person at the
beginning of our marriage and my husband really made almost all decisions about
family. It has been changed but he definitely is authority for me in a lot of
areas: politics, finances, we are equally shared our spiritual and parenting influence
and I am learning a lot from him. I was surprised that he is not aware of his
power in family, which still is more than 50 %, by my opinion. But we are with my husband discussing a lot
about relationships and this is an area as Dr. Gottman said in which emotionally intelligent husbands can learn
from their wives: “My data on newlywed couples indicate that more husbands
are being transformed in this way. About 35 percent of the men we’ve studied
are emotionally intelligent. Because this type of husband honor and respects his wife, he will be open to learning more about emotions from her…. When she needs
to talk, he will turn off the basketball game (or computer) and listen. He will
choose “us” over “me’.” Particularly for husbands this is a great change of
their role by “learning to yield” and to
be influenced by their wives. It does not mean that wives should dominate,
but their opinions and competence should be heard and accepted. The best
decisions have made when husband and wife discuss together.
We all have mental inversion. Godhard’
notice, that all people thinks that no human sees clearly, all people are
subjective, excepts we. “Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it
really is. Natural man imagines that no one in the world sees truth as clearly
as we do.“ Of course, it is illusion. “ This way of thinking is a pernicious
enemy. It keeps each of us from connecting with others and from being taught by
God”. Opposite of this pride position is
humility. “Humility is the friend of truth”. If we are humble we allow to
be influenced from both – our spouses and the Lord. Our discussions with my
husband would not result in agreement, particularly in “the moments of desperation”
if we would not humble ourselves before God, repent, pray and ask His Heavenly
power to overcome our “natural selfish man” inside each of us and to turn
ourselves over to God and over our partner. Actually by pondering about this
conversation with my husband this week, I realized that I allow to be influenced
by my husband in all other areas, but I could more listen to him and agree with
him when we are discussing about relationships. He has helped me a lot to be
aware of my possibilities to improve.
The Prophet Eza T. Benson has taught that “”the central feature of pride is enmity –
enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen.” This is a great and
probably gradual process what could happen inside us to accept that our spouse
is not enemy for us, but we are friends, we are “one flesh” what to love and
treat us ourselves. If we allow influence each other, together we are a team
that is much powerful as just sum of two of us.
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