Looking further into 1 Corinthians 13, verse 4 we see that love is not boastful. This is so important in a marriage. Marriage was meant to be a completion of each other not a competition. Have you ever found yourself saying to your spouse “Didn’t I tell you that was going to happen?” In a way, this is boasting. You may feel angry as you say it thinking why didn’t he just listen to me, but what your husband is hearing is “I’m smarter than you and I’m better than you and you can’t ever do anything right so just don’t try!”
Now does it sound like boasting? So many times we say mean things to each other and we don’t realize we are saying it just so we can look better than the other person. We do it not only with our husband but can tend to do it with everyone unless we keep that in check. It is a subconscious thing. If you look carefully at kids, they do it all the time because they are trying to gain acceptance and acknowledgment and we have taught them they can get that by knowing a lot of stuff and knowing it well (school).
Here’s another example of boasting. You are at work or at lunch with your girlfriends and you start “telling” on your spouse. “I can’t believe how dumb he is. I told him it wouldn’t work but he just had to do it!” Here you are trying to get agreement from your friends about how much smarter and better you are than your husband. This is not going to improve your marriage but instead just assist in furthering it down the road to divorce. You must watch what you say over your spouse (more on that in a later blog).
I have to remind my kids about this frequently. I tell them to not say mean things to or about each other because all they are trying do is make themselves look better so they can feel better about themselves when in reality, it just makes them look worse. Keep that in mind the next time you want to say something to or about your husband. Are you just being boastful? Let’s just choose love instead.
© 2011 Michelle Serna
