Amazing Strength, Amazing Results
Posted by Danielle Bean in Marriage on Tuesday, August 04, 2009 12:00 PM
Imagine that your husband comes home one day and announces, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”
How many of us would have the strength, wisdom, and self control to not become angry and emotional? How many of us us would have the perspective to see that hurtful actions are sometimes a symptom of a man who is hurting?
Well that’s just what writer Laura Munson managed to do. In the end, her strength, endurance, and wisdom saved her marriage. She shares the story in a NY Times article: Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear.
His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck. And once I recovered and composed myself, I managed to say, “I don’t buy it.” Because I didn’t.
Though of course she suffered when her husband tried to leave her, Munson managed to maintain a long-term view of their relationship. I find her commitment to her marriage, even through tough times, downright inspiring.
But I didn’t play into it. I walked my line. I told the kids: “Daddy’s having a hard time as adults often do. But we’re a family, no matter what.” I was not going to suffer. And neither were they.
I am especially struck by Munson’s quiet, non-politically correct insistence that marriage is a lifelong commitment for the good of the children that does not expire just because one spouse becomes bored or unhappy.
I said: “It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy.”
In the end, Munson’s toughness paid off. Her husband did not divorce her and the family survived this “bump in the road” intact.
They didn’t stay together for religious reasons (the article makes no mention of faith). They didn’t stay together because they had some romantic epiphany and fell madly back in love. Their marriage survived simply because Munson treated it like the lifelong commitment it is—till death do they part.
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