Uniqueness and Acceptance in Marriage

Differences abound in marriage. Generally, they can be divided into two
types. The first includes those that can’t be changed, such as age, race, looks,
home, and cultural background. Your
personal body metabolism will affect
where you want the temperature in the home, whether you wake up bright and
eager, ready to face the day, or whether you need an hour to get both eyes
focusing. These characteristics cannot be changed.
But the other category includes those differences that can be changed. These
include personal habits in the bathroom or at the dinner table, whether you like
to get up early and your spouse enjoys sleeping late, or whether one likes going
out three nights a week and the other prefers watching television at home.
Think about this, “If you plan to marry it is certain that you have a
preconceived fantasy of your ideal mate or the perfect marriage. After a while
you will begin to realize that your fantasy and the person you have married
will begin to diverge sharply. At that point you may embark upon a reform
program, forgetting that only God can make a tree. You misconstrued the words
of the wedding ceremony ‘and the two shall become one’ to mean that your
mate should become like you and your fantasy. You would become one in likes,
preferences, interests, hobbies, ideas, even reactions and feelings: YOURS!
The oneness in marriage is not similarity or sameness in matters relating to
ideas or feelings but to the oneness of understanding.


Uniqueness and Acceptance in Marriage

Our partner is not you. He or she is other, created in God’s image, not
yours. He has a right to be other, to be treated and respected as other.
Differences. How do you learn to adjust to the differences in your partner
without losing who you are? How do you learn to appreciate another person’s
uniqueness? How can you learn to live with this person who is so different
from you? The question is, “When you marry, do you end up marrying someone
who is your opposite or someone who is similar?” The answer is, “Yes.” It’s
both. There will be similarities as well as differences, and you have to learn to
adjust to both. Think of it like this:
We marry for our similarities. We stay together for our differences.
Similarities satiate, differences attract.
Differences are rarely the cause of conflict in marriage; the problems
arise from our similarities. Differences are the occasion, similarities are
the cause.
The differences may serve as the triggering event, as the issue for
debate, but our similarities create the conflict between us.
The very same differences that initially drew us together later pull us
apart and still later may draw us near again. Differences first attract, then
irritate, then frustrate, then illuminate and finally may unite us. Those traits
that intrigue in courtship, amuse in early marriage, begin to chafe in time
and infuriate in conflicts of middle marriages; but maturation begins to

change their meaning and the uniqueness of the other person becomes prized, even in the very differences that were primary irritants.

Any attempt to mold our

mates in an effort to match them to our fantasies is arrogance on our part and an

insult to them. While it is true that we can never mold or remake another

person, we can ‘allow’ him to change.”