If you’d like to let us know how your relationship got better, please leave us a comment.  You never know how your own experience may impact one of the other readers.

My (Michael) dear friend Casey McKown, who lives in the adjacent community of The Woodlands, came to pick us up and drive our family to the airport this morning. We are heading to Phoenix, Arizona to speak at a conference and the kids are joining us. I thought it would be fun to bring the kids to Phoenix and show them where their old man grew up.

As usual, we were all waiting outside in the car for my wife to finally exit the home. Like other crazy ladies out there, my wife has the excruciating need to thoroughly clean the house before leaving on vacation. I can not personally understand this need because my idea of cleanliness has more to do with stench than it does messes on the floor.

Casey and I were standing outside of the car chatting about life and discussing the linear equation to the mathematical equivalent of the speed of light (which I know there are several words in this sentence that are made up or used completely inaccurately). Or we were talking about the latest episode of Battle Star Galactica, because that is how we roll! Anyway, my wife finally comes outside to get in the car, and this is when it happened.

Casey and I were standing at the front of my Honda Odyssey as Amy passed us to get in the van. As she walked by she made a comment that only a wife can make, “Casey, do you see the damage Michael did to the front bumper when he hit a tire yesterday on the freeway.” My reaction was swift and immediate, “What?!” I was upset for two reasons. First, I was upset because I didn’t even know the front bumper was messed up which only further proves what an unmanly man I really am! Secondly, that was totally unfair!

As Amy knelt down by the damaged front bumper, she pointed out the massive black mark and how the side of the bumper was now detached from the van. Amy again highlighted how I’d hit the tire on the freeway which caused the extensive damage. I was beside myself and did what any normal human being does when getting unfairly blamed, I got defensive! In one quick, reactive statement I retorted Amy’s comment by saying, “And by hit a tire on the freeway, do you mean a car swerved in front of us, cutting us off, and blew a tire which then flew across the ground at blinding speeds and smacked in to our front bumper?”

What did I get for my brilliant argument? A simple, yet profound “Nope, you hit it.” And with that Amy got in the car with a wry smile on her face. The kind of smile that says, “Gotcha.” Luckily we are writing a book on personal responsibility, because as I was getting upset and preparing my “you’re not allowed to blame me” speech, God quietly reminded me that my defensiveness was getting me overly worked up. Amy was clearly messing with me, but I was allowing my pride to cause me to react poorly.

This is why defensiveness is so unhelpful in relationships.

We define defensiveness as a person’s attempt to resolve a problem through arguing, explaining away, or being combative. When we argue with someone about the facts surrounding a circumstance, we are being defensive. When conflict occurs between two people, the “remembered” facts of the situation are rarely accurate. It never does us any good to argue facts with our spouse (or anyone for that matter). Discussing the facts only causes defensiveness in the person we are arguing with about the facts!

Explaining away is one of the more popular ways to be defensive. It does not initially appear argumentative or combative, but this could not be further from the truth. Take for example a recent couple we saw in one of our Marriage Restoration Intensives. When we asked the wife what it would take to get her marriage from a 3 to a 10 (1 being horrible and 10 being great) she said, “It would be nice if we could spend more time together at home just hanging out and not working on the computer.” The wife’s voice was calm as she shared her need, but the husband’s reaction was swift. “What do you mean spend more time together at home? When I’m home all you seem to want to do is sit on the couch and watch your favorite shows. How can that be spending time together? I would love to spend more time together at home, but it is not my fault this isn’t happening!”

Can you see the breakdown in communication and the defensiveness? The wife was obviously not feeling like they were spending any time together at home. Her definition of spending time together was clearly different than her husband’s, but her husband reacted poorly by getting upset and defensive. The husband took her need as a direct assault on him, as if he was the person at fault for them not spending any time together. So he fought back with defensiveness by trying to explain away his wife’s opinion.

You know the drill. You get accused of something and you feel that if you could only “convince” your spouse about the inaccuracy of her opinion or experience, things would get better. But things do not get better, ever, when we try to explain away our spouse’s feelings or needs.

Defensiveness causes unhappiness and a breakdown in communication because it escalates the negative emotions we might be experiencing in a conflict (or potential conflict). Have you ever experienced your spouse calming down after being defensive? Probably not, so then why do we keep doing it? Because we are not taking personal responsibility of our emotions and choices. Defensiveness is a direct result of a lack of taking responsibility. Who wants to be told their feelings and needs are inaccurate or wrong? No one does.

So then why do we choose to react defensively even though we know it is not going to help the conflict? In our experience, we have found three reasons why people tend to get defensive:

1. We get defensive because we are sinful.

There is no escaping our sinfulness. We have already discussed this earlier in the book. But we want to keep reminding you of your brokenness. Not because we want you to feel bad about your sin, but because we want you to be humble and understand your spouse’s needs and feelings. Our sin does not define us, God does. In Genesis we learned that we were created in God’s image. This gives us tremendous value. No other part of God’s creation was given this distinction. So your sin does not define who you are. However, it does impact how you behave and that is where we need to be sensitive, humble, and understanding.

2. We get defensive because we want to prove we are right or our spouse is wrong.

How many arguments have you gotten in to with your spouse because you wanted to prove something? Does it feel good when your spouse or someone else tries to invalidate your feelings or needs? Probably not, we can all relate to how that might feel. Getting in to a who’s right or who’s wrong conversation is never a good thing. The conflict will only get worse and you will never come together as a team if you are constantly on opposing sides or counsel (like lawyers in a courtroom).

3. We get defensive because we feel bad that something we did was taken wrong or misunderstood.

This reason for defensiveness can be the hardest one to break. The first two reasons are pretty obvious and make logical sense in terms of their negative impact on a marriage. If we are going to be happy in our marriage, then we have to allow our spouse to feel negatively about something we may have unintentionally done. This seems unfair because why should we be punished for something we did not do? It sounds so logical to try and explain away the unintentional hurt of our spouse. “If only he would listen to me and let me explain what I meant, he would feel better.” But our spouse doesn’t feel better after we have tried to explain away the hurt, does he? We do this as well, and we both know it never seems to make things better.

What was wrong with us? I easily saw all the things Michael was doing but since this is a book about taking personal responsibility, I guess I should stick to how I was hurting the marriage and contributing to the misery of our first 6 months.

You see, my sin looks a little different from Michael’s but it’s still sin. Sin manifests itself in many ways. But the one way I want to focus on here is the sin of blaming. When things were going wrong in our marriage it is easy to look across the room and focus on all the things Michael was doing wrong. But reality was that we both were doing things wrong or unproductive. By focusing on Michael’s brokenness I put him down with blame and elevated myself with pride.

One of the most unproductive and unhealthy things I used to say was, “I wouldn’t be so angry if you wouldn’t …..” Another way to say this was, “You make me angry! I don’t want to be angry, but you keep messing up!” I had convinced myself that I was a victim of Michael’s imperfections. I truly believed that I was in the right to get upset because Michael was making mistakes left and right. In essence, if Michael would only behave I would not have to yell or get upset. In my mind, I was actually being forced to express myself with intensity (i.e. yell) at Michael. I was not my fault, but Michael’s fault! Blaming Michael meant that I was less at fault for our bad marriage. The only problem was that the relief I felt for blaming Michael only seemed to last for a little while and then I felt the deep disconnection between us. The problem with sin is that everyone has a problem with it. Which means I was equally at fault for what was going on in our marriage. I was not a victim of Michael’s unhealth, I was a victim of my own unhealth.

When we say, “It’s not my fault!”, we take on the attitude of blaming. In this chapter we want to unpack blaming and show you how it destroys the chance of a happy marriage. Let’s start our exploration of blaming with the first person to ever blame. Adam. In one of the greatest examples of blaming to ever be recorded Adam said to God in response to getting caught eating the apple, “The ‘woman’You gave me as a companion, gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it,” (emphasis added).What an awesome example of blaming! The eating of the apple was the first mistake man ever made, and with the first mistake ever made man chose to blame both God and women! Very little has changed since Adam uttered the first blame. But how interesting that the first sin was also accompanied by the first blame.

As Adam was faced with his own mistake, he reached down deep inside himself and pulled out “the woman you gave me”. The God of the universe, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything had just asked Adam if he’d eaten from the tree he was told not to eat from. Instead of taking responsibility for his action, Adam chose to blame. And not just blame, but actually accuse God of being the real culprit behind his own mistake! It wasn’t enough for Adam to simply pass blame on to his wife, he also tried to get out of trouble by blaming God! “You made her God, so if you hadn’t made this woman I would never have eaten that apple. I don’t want to blame you God, I’m just saying…” As Mike Golic from ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning radio show would say, “Just stop it!” Stop it. When we stop it we start humbling ourselves.These are powerful words when dealing with the blame game.

Ben Reaoch wrote a great article on blaming for John Piper’s blog. Reaoch wrote, “Making excuses is arrogant and foolish. It’s a proud way of trying to justify our actions and pacify our guilty consciences. And it keeps us from humbling ourselves before God to repent of our sins and seek his forgiveness.”

Why doesn’t blaming work? Why did it hurt us during our first six months of marriage? Because blaming disconnects us from God and others. Blaming is a reflection of our pride. It is our pride that will prevent us from seeing the truth in our marriage. In John 8:31-32 (NIV) tells us, “If you hold to my teachings, you are really my disciples. Then you will known the truth and the truth will set you free.” The reason we quoted verse 31 in this context is very important. We believe sometimes the most well meaning yet hurting people will seek after their own truth and it will set them free (many times they feel free to divorce their spouse). God wants us to hold to His teachings first and as we fear and know God His truth is revealed. The biggest difference is humbling ourselves before Christ first, walking in obedience, then asking for what steps to take in our relationships.

We believe there are two kinds of people in this world. Those people who are “normally dysfunctional” and those people who are “specially dysfunctional”. Notice how there is no one free from dysfunction. There are just different levels of dysfunction. Normal dysfunction is like you and us. Normal people trying to make their way in the world and trying to do the right thing.

Specially dysfunctional people are those 10-15% of the adult US population that are affected by serious personality disorders like Narcissism, Borderline, Antisocial, or Schizoid personality disorder.1 We are not sharing this information with you so you will try and diagnose your spouse. You need to leave that to the professional doctors and psychiatrists who diagnose individuals for a living using sophisticated tests and measurements. Google can be a useful to learn information, but it makes for a horrible diagnostic tool. The point of “normally dysfunctional” and “specially dysfunctional” is that we are all fallen, sinful individuals. Blaming our spouse for being dysfunctional can be ridiculous considering we are just as messed up! We will deal with this issue of “specially dysfunctional” in a later chapter. We know there are some of you reading our book and you might be victims of very horrible things by a truly dysfunctional spouse.

We are never allowed to blame God or others for our actions. We must take full responsibility for how we respond to people and circumstances. When we take responsibility for our actions we are humbling ourselves before God and man. We give our marriage the best chance of being satisfied when we are taking on the burden of creating an environment for our marriage to succeed. I (Amy) love this quote from Abraham Lincoln, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” This quote is not meant to degrade any pain or trial you are going through it means you can make it through.

But why does it feel so good to blame our spouse for the problems in our marriage? We deal with this very issue when couples in crisis come to our Marriage Restoration Intensive program here in Houston. Couples come from all over the country to get help with their marriage. A100% of these couples come because something is wrong with their marriage and/or their spouse. Couples usually come in with the attitude,“this is what my spouse has done wrong.” There are three main reasons why people love to blame their spouse for a broken marriage:

1. It comes quite natural to us. (Genesis 3:12)
2. It makes us feel better about ourselves
3. It takes the focus off our own sinfulness.

Focusing on who you are in the middle of hurtful circumstances is one of the most challenging and rewarding benefits of being a Christ follower. It means you have to let go of what people (especially your spouse) have done to you and focus on what you have done to them or what your attitude has been toward them. If no one is perfect, then everyone can always figure out their part in any conflict. We are never completely innocent in conflict. There is always something we could have done better. This book is about helping you learn how to focus on your own reactions to conflict so you can create an environment for your marriage to thrive.

John and Kris (all names in this book have been changed for privacy, so any names that seem familiar is only coincidence) came to our Marriage Restoration Intensive (MRI) because of John’s affair. If you have not heard about our MRI program, just go to www.gosmalley.com to learn more about how we help couples in conflict. In brief, the MRI program is either a one-day or two-day intensive where couples from all over the country come to Houston, Texas to get help. The intensive format is extremely successful in helping couples in crisis turn their marriage around and stay together and increase their overall marital satisfaction.

We get lots of couples dealing with the devastating effects of an affair. John and Kris were no different. Kris found out about the affair when the woman involved with her husband called her to confess what was happening. What a phone call that must have been! Could you imagine having the woman who was sleeping with your husband call you out-of-the-blue to confess because she was feeling guilty!

Kris was devastated, as any woman should be after getting a call from the mistress of her husband. They initially tried to help themselves through several different books, but their issues were too big to deal with alone. They eventually called us and got scheduled for a MRI with me (Michael). I will never forget this intensive because of the incredible lack of personal responsibility not assumed throughout the intensive.

The MRI was pretty normal through the first half of the day together. Kris was hurting and was lashing out significantly at John for having the affair. This is not abnormal, so I let her get what she needed off her chest. But she was really letting him have it and he was sitting there taking it all on for more than half the day. John was actually quite kind and accepting of his mistake and I could see how bad he felt.

After lunch I was ready to get Kris moving forward and wanted to help her begin the process of forgiveness, but Kris was uninterested in this part of the process. She could not let go of the fact that John had cheated on her. I never want to allow anyone to get out of control during an intensive when sharing hurt feelings. I just do not believe it is productive to handle ourselves in a way that is dishonoring, no matter how hurt we are by a situation. I had to repeatedly interrupt Kris and help her find a different, less aggressive way to word how she felt. It got so bad after lunch that I finally began to get frustrated with her and was becoming impatient with her lack of forgiveness. Even though my wife has never cheated on me, I can understand how miserable an affair must feel. But Kris was really giving it to her husband – one slashing statement after another.

I finally had to take drastic steps to help Kris regain control and to start thinking about her side of the affair. That’s right, there are always two sides to an affair. Rarely does a married person have an affair when the marriage is extremely healthy! This is important to understand. Affairs do not generally happen to happily married couples. An affair simply points out that something was broken in the marriage. This does not mean an affair is a good way to respond to a broken marriage, because it is not. An affair is an incredibly stupid way to respond to a hurting marriage. It only makes everything worse! But that doesn’t mean the person who had the affair was the only person doing anything wrong in the marriage.

I stopped Kris during one of her blasting statements toward John and asked her simply, “What was your part in this affair?” As you can imagine, this was not a question that Kris wanted to say. For a brief moment, I became the focus of her anger and hurt. But when she stopped, I simply asked her again, “What was your part?” She looked at me and said, “I had no part, this is all his fault!” Her statement was not a complete surprise to me, but I had to get her to somehow figure out what she had done wrong in the marriage. So I asked the question in a different way, “Have you ever done anything hurtful in your marriage toward John?” She answered quickly, “I don’t know.”

Now that answer surprised me a little. I could not believe that she was unaware of any past mistakes of her own in the marriage. I looked at John and asked, “Has she ever hurt you in the past?” He looked over at his wife and said, “Can I tell him about the affair you had?”

What! I truly did not believe what I was hearing. “Is it true that she had an affair?” At this point Kris finally looked at me and said, “Yes, but that was almost two-years ago!” Like somehow the fact that she’d cheated on her husband almost two-years ago was not as big of a deal as her husband cheating on her recently! “So let me get this straight. I’ve been listening to you crush your husband for well over four hours because he had an affair. And this entire time you’ve not felt like it was important to tell me that you have also had an affair?” She answered, “I didn’t think it was relevant.”

Friends, your dysfunction is very relevant to the relationship. When we cannot see our own faults, then our most precious relationships suffer dramaticly. The reality is when we fail to take ownership of our own problems, we will blame our spouse of theirs. I spent over four hours listening to Kris trash her husband for cheating on her, and yet, she had also cheated on him. I finally understood why it was so hard for her to forgive him, because his affair was only highlighting her own affair. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was just as guilty and messed up as him.
We want to let you in on a little secret about all of us. We are all messed up! One of our favorite things to do at the beginning of a seminar is to ask the audience to take a look around at all the people sitting around them. Then we say, “Do you see all these people? They are sick people.” One of the excuses individuals give for avoiding an enrichment seminar is that they do not want other people to know their marriage may be in trouble. Let us ease your mind on this issue, every marriage is in trouble at some point because every marriage is filled with broken, sinful individuals.

In 1 Kings 8:46 we read, “When they sin against you—and they certainly will; there’s no one without sin!” Circle in your book “no one without sin”. The bad news is that we are all infected with this thing called sin. It is our brokenness, our heartache, our mistakes, selfishness, and disconnection from God. The good news is that we are all infected by sin! We are all in this thing together so we can have compassion on each other. We all need grace and forgiveness. There is no one person better than the other and so we all need to take ownership of our own junk. We can be gracious and merciful toward our spouse because we need and desire that same graciousness and mercy. Do not let the knowledge of your sin tear you down, but instead allow it to help you be more humble and loving toward your spouse and others.

When we ignore our sinfulness the divisiveness of pride, impatience, and prejudice are soon to follow. All three of these consequences disconnect us from our spouse. Pride separates us because we are too consumed by what we deserve to see what our spouse needs. Impatience draws us apart because of our irritable and snappy attitudes revealing our focus on our spouse’s issues and irritants. Being judgmental disconnects us because, frankly, who wants to hang out someone who has predetermined exactly what you mean, your intentions, and who you are. No one enjoys being judged, especially our spouse.

What a difference it can make when you understand the DNA of relationships, the relationship dances, and the five dance steps. As you join me in this delightful adventure of discovery, you’ll experience God’s love and power in fresh and exciting ways:

You’ll learn about the amazing Power of One. You’ll see how to take personal responsibility for your part in all relationships. You’ll see how to become completely empowered to choose how you feel within all of your relationships. This message has completely changed our family, our staff, and our lives. We just have to send it out to the world, to churches and families and couples and singles, so that others can enjoy the same freedom and enthusiasm that we’re enjoying! Can you just imagine teenagers—or anyone else for that matter—not blaming others for being unhappy? They could learn how to be responsible for their own emotions. That would be a great day.

You’ll learn about Safety, about creating an environment that feels safe, where true intimacy can take root and bloom. You’ll learn how personal differences can enhance your relationship instead of causing problems and how you can adopt an attitude of curiosity that brings excitement to your life. And you’ll discover how to effectively and positively deal with “walls” that your partner may put up. Just imagine friends, couples and kids feeling completely safe to open up and share their deepest thoughts with others who love them.

You’ll learn about Self-care, how God wants you to take care of yourself so that you can become a channel of his love to others. We’ll show you how to make sure that your internal battery is charged, ready to connect for satisfied and fulfilled relationships. Imagine a host of people learning how to take care of themselves in ways that enable them to care for others. Can you see workplaces and churches filled with people who are not expecting others to fill them up, but rather are taking care of themselves during the week and come to work or church to enrich each other?
You’ll learn about Emotional Communication, a powerful communication method with the strength to eliminate the main causes of divorce and the primary causes of separation between friends. You’ll learn how to connect deeply with the heart of another person. We’ll show you how to find the emotional “nugget” that leads to effective and fulfilling communication, enabling you to feel confident that you will be understood. And we’re going to show you how to make communication easier and more efficient than you’ve ever experienced! Imagine feeling that others deeply understand you.

You’ll learn about Teamwork, about adopting a no-losers policy that will help you walk in harmony and complete unity with your spouse, family members, and friends so that you never again have to worry about losing an argument. We’ll show you how to identify the obstacles that make your relationships difficult, as well as how to clear those hurdles out of the way. Imagine families and neighbors and colleagues working through conflict in ways that don’t damage relationships.
Does any of this sound appealing to you? Does it sound like something you would like in your own life?

Well, how could it not?

The best thing we can do is focus on what we need to change. Even if we do not feel like our spouse is responding, we still have to do the right thing when it comes to our own behaviors and attitudes!

So leave us a comment on what you wish you could change about yourself below.

The greatest advice no one wants to hear is that of taking personal responsibility for your own thoughts, actions, and emotions.  When your spouse is hurting your feelings or frustrating you, it is difficult to hear someone say, “I hear what you’re saying, but where do you need to change?”  But this question is exactly the question that is going to get your relationship headed in the right direction.

Until you recognize that God alone changes people (especially your spouse), you will remain stuck in your relationship.  The worst posture we can take in our marriage is when we point the finger and blame.  When we look at our spouse and think, “You are both the problem and the solution to my sadness.”  What this means is that we look at our spouse’s poor behavior and believe that if only they would change, then we could be happy.  But this is a lie!

The only thing you can do to truly make an impact on your marriage is work night and day on being the best husband or wife possible.  What other choice do you have?  If you enter into the dysfunction of your spouse, then things are guaranteed to get worse.  If you decide to do the right thing (patience, mercy, kindness, forgiveness) then at least you are setting up the relationship to change for the better.

What do you think keeps you from working on yourself?

For marriage choices it narrows down to two critical things every married individual must exercise: unconditional love and personal responsibility. Unconditional love means you accept and cherish your mate as he or she is. Personal responsibility means you take charge of correcting your own faults instead of your mate’s. That, in a nutshell, is it. Intimacy, happiness, growth, communication and all the other vital aspects of a good marriage grow out of these two choices. If both partners recognize this fact, there will be no victims in the marriage. Each person’s happiness will rest entirely in his or her own hands. And the end result is the safety and security that every marriage must have in order to thrive.

Do you believe this? Really believe this? Since it’s my contention that all behavior is a result of what we believe, this is a crucial question. Do you believe that you can take personal responsibility for the success of your marriage? If you don’t, then you must believe the opposite—that your spouse or circumstances are in control of what happens to you. You must believe that you are a victim. Therefore you must react and put the blame on your mate when the marriage does not meet your expectations. This is a tragedy, because when you blame your mate you not only divest yourself of your responsibility, you also reduce the choices you have to change the relationship. You forfeit the ability to control your own destiny.

So if you want your marriage to be the most exciting and rewarding journey of your life, the question to ask is not whether your mate is doing enough to make the marriage work, but rather: Are you loving your mate unconditionally by taking responsibility for your role in the relationship? A good way to turn this intention into a commitment is to make a promise of it. Promise to look at yourself first, to take responsibility for your own part of the marriage, and to stop trying to change your mate. Such a promise puts legs on unconditional love. It says you are willing to put your personal dreams and needs on hold for a while and make what’s best for the relationship a priority.

My all time favorite comic strip is the one from Peanuts where Charlie Brown attempts to kick a football held by Lucy. But she always jerks it away at the last minute, causing poor Charlie to fall flat on his back. Each year Lucy promises Charlie Brown that this time she will keep the football on the ground so he can kick it. Each year Charlie Brown is doubtful. He wavers. He remembers all the times that Lucy has yanked the football away. Each year Lucy gives Charlie plausible, sincere explanations why this time it will be different. And each year Charlie Brown finally believes her, races determinedly across the yard, and falls with a thud when yet again Lucy yanks the football away.
If you are like me, you feel sorry for Charlie Brown. You also probably feel angry at Lucy. She’s really being unkind. But has it ever occurred to you that Charlie brown is being stupid? After all, he’s been falling for the same old trick for years. When will he ever learn? What is he thinking? Well, obviously he thinks that this time, at long last, Lucy will not jerk the football away. And when she does, what does Charlie Brown do? He blames Lucy! Now think about this for a moment. Who’s really at fault here?
I believe Charlie Brown is at fault. Here’s why. Who, in the final analysis, is the cause of the problem? It’s not Lucy. Lucy is not doing it to Charlie Brown. He is allowing this to happen to him. He hasn’t learned a thing in all the years Lucy has been snatching the ball away. Unless Charlie Brown decides for himself to stop trying to kick the football, nothing will ever change. But if he changes his behavior and stops trying to kick the ball, two positive things happen: He avoids disappointment and Lucy’s behavior changes. She has no choice. She won’t be able to take the football away.
Saying all this doesn’t make Lucy right; it just means that Charlie Brown’s happiness is always in his own hands. Happiness is always your choice, as we will see in a moment. When you feel unhappy or unfulfilled in your marriage, more than likely it means you have not done enough to create a secure environment where unconditional love can flourish. You need to focus your attention entirely on what you can do to become more loving—not on trying to change your partner—because that’s what will make the greatest difference in your marriage and in your happiness. As long as we focus on being right and in control, insisting on the appearance of being correct while making our spouse appear to be wrong, the secure environment in which love can grow will elude us.
You probably don’t want to hear this, but it’s true. If you are unhappy in a relationship, you’re the one who’s probably at fault. A strong statement? Absolutely. But if you can come to grips with the truth of it, it will change your marriage and your life.

This is the key to real, lasting love in your marriage: change yourself first and accept your mate unconditionally just the way he or she is. Then as you work with God to become more like Him, watch how your mate will eventually try to emulate you. But don’t do this just to change your mate; do it for yourself and for your own personal relationship with God. By taking responsibility for your actions and changing even small behaviors, you demonstrate unconditional love and thus create an emotionally secure atmosphere in which your marriage can thrive. Pushing your spouse to change in order to make you feel safer is hardly the way of unconditional love. When you want to change your mate, 99.99% of the time there’s a selfish motive behind it. Expecting him or her to change to meet your expectations is putting self first, and if your mate does the same thing, then you have two selves in conflict, each fighting to fulfill his or her own needs. The only way to improve the relationship is to shine the spotlight on yourself and expose your own faults and weaknesses. Your mate may not want to deal with his or her problems, but you will be surprised at how great an impact your own example can have when you choose to deal with your own. You must not give in to hopelessness and helplessness even if you are convinced that your partner is the real problem. Even if that is true, by changing yourself, you can affect things dramatically and positively. I can hardly wait for you to reach chapter 6, because there I’ll show you the easiest and fastest way possible to change anything about yourself.
Here’s why you will influence change in your mate when you change yourself. As one person makes changes, those changes have a ripple effect on the other simply because your lives are connected and interact at many levels. Over time, you and your mate have shaped each other’s behavior by consciously and unconsciously rewarding some behaviors and punishing others. Habits of behavior have been established. Patterns of relating ingrained. In every marriage these patterns cause the relationship to achieve a certain kind of complementary balance. I don’t mean it’s necessarily a formal balance with equality of happiness and responsibility on both sides. One partner may be very aggressive and even overbearing, while the other responds by becoming very passive and compliant. By balance I mean that the two partner’s attributes and responses adjust to accommodate each other. And they maintain some kind of equilibrium that way. Therefore, if one partner changes, the relationship changes, because the other automatically moves to adjust and maintain the balance.
So, when you take it upon yourself to change, you automatically change the balance of the marriage, and your mate must also change in order to maintain equilibrium. Even the slightest change is like adding a weight to one side of the balance. Your partner will sense the imbalance, feel uncomfortable, and adjust. I’ll admit that now and then the partner’s adjustment is for the worse. But not usually. When you make a truly positive change, it’s highly likely that the corresponding change your partner makes will also be positive.
There are two kinds of changes you can make to improve a relationship: you can either increase pleasure or decrease pain. To put it in behaviorist’s terms, you can eliminate undesirable behaviors or increase desirable ones. The latter approach is not only more effective, it’s also easier. It’s much easier to do more of something a partner likes than to stop doing something he hates. And research indicates that this approach works better. Adding loving behaviors will reduce annoying ones.
Sometimes your mate may resist your new behavior. He or she might find even positive changes threatening simply because the balance has been upset. But if you persevere and remain consistent with your change, chances are excellent that your mate will eventually come around and change his or her behavior too, and most often in a positive direction. This is what I call the “principle of reciprocity.” When you do even simple random acts of kindness, such as back rubs, washing the dishes, giving flowers, or making a favorite dessert, your partner is likely to respond in a positive way. Your behavior influences your mate’s behavior, and your mate’s behavior rewards your behavior, making you want to reciprocate. It’s not a vicious circle; it’s a delicious circle.

Adam and Eve were caught in sin. They had just eaten from the forbidden tree. When God entered the garden, neither of them would take personal responsibility. Adam shifted the blame to Eve and God by saying, “This woman you gave me.” Eve shifted the blame to Satan. This is where the “blame game” got started.

When we stop blaming others for our shortcomings, we diffuse anger and resolve conflicts.

We encourage you to resist making “you” statements such as, “You’re the one who needs to change,” “You should have warned me that our marriage was in trouble,” “You’re not the same man I married,” and “You weren’t submissive enough,” as reasons for your behavior. These “you” statements are deadly to a relationship, and they seldom improve your situation. Avoid using these types of blaming statements. I have found that you can not change another person, it’s impossible. You can only change yourself with the power of God living within you. You might be able to influence a change in someone else, but your focus should be on the areas of your own life that need improvement. You influence people to change the most by first letting them see a change in you.

Using a statement such as, “You were just too sensitive,” stirs up more anger. As this happens, the blaming backfires and exposes your resistance to improve or change. When you experience the urge to blame, remember King Solomon’s wise words: “A man of knowledge uses words with restraint, and a man of understanding is even-tempered” (Proverbs 17:27).

When conflict raises its ugly head in your relationships, where do you place blame? Your spouse? Kids? Boss? Job? Church? Money?

What steps could you take to accept personal responsibility in your life?

Our son David loves routine and for the third year in a row he wanted to have his birthday at a place near our house called Pump It Up. It is a great venue for kids and is filled from floor to ceiling with these awesome air-blown trampolines, slides, and obstacle courses. We decided to download the birthday invitations so we could fold and hand them out to all the kids in his class.

Over the years, Michael has learned how to use graphic design programs like Photoshop and Adobe Indesign. When you can’t hire a graphic design team, you do the graphic design work yourself. After we downloaded the invitation, Michael had the idea of making custom changes to the invitation. I was thrilled by his suggestions and gave him the thumbs up to make some changes. We talked about what we wanted added to the cards and then he made the changes. I was quite excited about what we had done to the card! And this would be the last time I felt any kind of positive emotion about this invitation.

The very next morning was the start of a two-day Marriage Restoration Intensive with a couple in crisis for me. This is a program of ours that helps couples in crisis get through trama and hopefully regain a happy marriage. I had to leave early in the morning and was gone before my kids even awoke. Michael was in his office putting the finishing touches on the birthday invitation when our 7-year old walked in and excitedly asked what he was doing. He showed him the card on the computer and David loved it! Then our son asked a question. The answer Michael gave to his question will haunt me for the rest of my days. “Daddy, can you put on the card what I want for my birthday?”

Sounds like an innocent question, doesn’t it. But Michael had no idea of the consequences his decision would reap in only two short days.

Michael replied to David’s question with a resounding, “Of course! Daddy can put whatever you want on this card!” So our son asked for him to put on his birthday card (that was going to be handed over to every single mother in David’s class), “David is requesting CASH for his birthday present.”

I still have a hard time believing that Michael didn’t even consider how this request may come across as inappropriate and rude. But alas, he did not. Michael printed the cards, folded them up, and handed them out to each kid in the class. It wasn’t till later that day, when Michael was sitting under the big Oak tree at our kid’s school, that he wondered if it was weird to put such a request on a birthday card.

One of the moms in our son’s class was sitting next to him under the tree. Michael leaned over and asked her if she had opened the invitation yet. She said no. He then asked her if it was weird to put David’s request for CASH on the birthday invitation. Her response was classic, “Oh no. You did not put that on David’s birthday card?” He said yes. She then asked if I knew what had been added to the card, and he told her that I had not seen the cards yet. The mom then said to him, “Don’t tell her.”

We are not usually ones to endorse keeping secrets, but Michael did feel that this secret did have real implications on his life going on or ending. Which he was probably correct! I know the wives reading this story are weeping in empathy for me, thanks girls!

The party came and I was clueless about the invitation. I did wonder why all the moms were only bringing envelopes as gifts, however. I even brought this to Michael’s attention! It did not bother me, in fact, it was quite the opposite. I was actually pretty happy that the moms did not feel obligated to bring David more gifts. You see, I assumed that the cards were only cards. I did not know yet that the cards contained CASH! I just figured David already had enough toys and was content with no new presents to eventually organize and clean.

[I, Michael, must interject at this point of the story]

Can you imagine my horror at the total health of my wife! Here I was, getting prepared to be lambasted by my wife, and she pulls out this statement! I could not believe my ears. I knew Amy was loving and gracious, but this was crazy! I already felt bad for what she was about to find out, but then her attitude of graciousness at thinking no one was bringing any gifts only made my sickness even worse.

[I've said my peace, Amy can continue now]

Thanks for giving me permission to continue, sweetie =]. Michael was quickly becoming aware of how much trouble his little invitation was about to get him into. And then it happened. One of the moms, who is also a good friend of ours, came right up to me with David’s present. It was a nicely colored tin jar filled to the brim with coins. She was quite proud of her sarcastic moment and winked towards Michael, knowing full well that she was getting him into trouble! She knew what Michael had done and she was making sure he got in trouble for it. She then handed me the invitation and politely said, “I was so thankful your husband let us all know what David wanted for his birthday present.”

That was it. The secret was out and I did what any wife would do in that moment, I whacked Michael on the arm and then pulled him close to my lips and whispered, “We’ll talk about this later.”

I did it! I actually controlled my emotions and put them on hold until we could finish David’s birthday party. Nothing is worse than ruining a party with a horrible fight. I knew this and actually made a decision to put off the discussion until we got home. I wanted to keep David’s party sacred and the reality was that I did not have to respond with anger. I had a choice, and so do you.

Here is the reality. We all have a choice when it comes to our reactions. There are no victims in a healthy marriage, only two people totally responsible for their own emotions and reactions. We have already outlined for you in the beginning chapters on why you do not want to be a victim in any relationship. Victims feel powerless and out-of-control. The reality is that we are not powerless nor out-of-control. We contain the ability to choose how we respond to any circumstance or situation.

If we do not take control over our emotions and reactions, then Mr. Powerless and Mrs. Fear are going to take control for us. Because if we are not taking command of how we respond, then the only choice we leave ourselves is powerlessness and fear.

One of the more poignant things we learned early on in our marriage is that we did not make each other feel anything. This might sound like an impossible statement. But it is true. People, places, or things can not make us feel or do anything. It is our choice in response to someone’s demands or sin against us.

2 Corinthians 5:10 reads, “Sooner or later we’ll all have to face God, regardless of our conditions. We will appear before Christ and take what’s coming to us as a result of our actions, either good or bad.” Notice that this verse says nothing about other people. It only mentions us. We will appear in front of Christ one day and will take responsibility for how we handled ourself while living on Earth. There is no mention of circumstances or other people.

If we are not in control of how we feel or how we respond, then who is? Another problem in acting like a victim is that we open ourselves up to experience harassment from evil and other people.

Evil is a real problem in everyone’s life! There is no one who gets a free pass from being messed with by evil. Until Christ’s return, we are all victims of Satan’s plot against mankind. 1 Peter 5: 8-10 says:

8 Keep a cool head. Stay alert. The Devil is poised to pounce, and would like nothing better than to catch you napping. 9 Keep your guard up. You’re not the only ones plunged into these hard times. It’s the same with Christians all over the world. So keep a firm grip on the faith. 10 The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good.

Scripture is filled with references about taking responsibility for our lives. “Stay alert” is an active and personal statement to us. The Devil would like nothing else than for us to be unaware of our own power and ability to resist and defend ourselves from his attacks. We will get in to the spiritual warfare aspect later on in the book.

But the point is to take control over protecting ourselves and to take control over our responses to circumstances. I (Amy) could have easily freaked out at the party and really let Michael have it for humiliating me in front of all of David’s friends. But I did not have to freak out. I had a choice and so do you.

Michael messed up the invitation, but that does not mean I have to lose control and handle myself in a destructive manner. I did feel humiliated and embarrassed, but the key is in knowing that my emotional response was my choice. Michael does not control how I feel, I do.

Your spouse does not make you feel anything. Your feelings are a direct result of your choices. If you choose to feel humiliated, distraught, depressed, or any other negative emotion, there is no one to blame but yourself. We are not trying to be insensitive to the hurt you experience from a spouse (or anyone), we are trying to get you to understand how you have control over what you feel and how you respond.

This is a freedom of experience permission slip! Your spouse and other people are going to continue sinning against you. There is no way to avoid sin from other people. Sin permeates this entire planet. The question is, how are you going to respond to sin? Are you going to allow someone else’s issues to bring you down? Or are you going to make a stand and choose to respond in a productive, loving manner?

There’s even a website for young people suffering the effects of a quarter-life crisis (http://www.quarterlifecrisis.com):

QLC FAQs
• Q: What is a quarterlife crisis?
• A: The quarterlife crisis, or QLC, is essentially a period of anxiety, uncertainty and inner turmoil that often accompanies the transition to adulthood.

• Q: Who coined the phrase “quarterlife crisis?”
• A: Abby Wilner, co-author of Quarterlife Crisis and Quarterlifer’s Companion, coined the phrase in 1997 after she graduated from college, moved back home, and couldn’t figure out what to do with her life.

• Q: What makes the QLC unique for twentysomethings today?
• A: Essentially, it is taking longer to become an adult today based on traditional markers such as financial independence and starting a family. The average American job hops 8 times before the age of 32, the average college graduate accrues $20,000 in education loan debt, and the average age to get married is now 27.

Here’s my advice for 20-somethings, grow up.  The site talks about how these young kids are feeling it is taking longer to grow up, who’s fault is that?  Maybe they should spend less time focusing on a quarter-life crisis and more time choosing to mature.  I do not want this to sound harsh, but since I’m feeling the need to write those words, I must be feeling like I’m being too harsh.  But the story really caught me off guard this morning.

It just feels like society is looking for labels and things to blame for our own choices in life.  We all need to take control over our lives and make the kind of decisions that improves our lives and the lives of others.  What do you think?

My (Michael) dear friend Casey McKown, who lives in the adjacent community of The Woodlands, came to pick us up and drive our family to the airport this morning. We are heading to Phoenix, Arizona to speak at a conference and the kids are joining us. I thought it would be fun to bring the kids to Phoenix and show them where their old man grew up.

As usual, we were all waiting outside in the car for my wife to finally exit the home. Like other crazy ladies out there, my wife has the excruciating need to thoroughly clean the house before leaving on vacation. I can not personally understand this need because my idea of cleanliness has more to do with stench than it does messes on the floor.

Casey and I were standing outside of the car chatting about life and discussing the linear equation to the mathematical equivalent of the speed of light (which I know there are several words in this sentence that are made up or used completely inaccurately). Or we were talking about the latest episode of Battle Star Galactica, because that is how we roll! Anyway, my wife finally comes outside to get in the car, and this is when it happened.

Casey and I were standing at the front of my Honda Odyssey as Amy passed us to get in the van. As she walked by she made a comment that only a wife can make, “Casey, do you see the damage Michael did to the front bumper when he hit a tire yesterday on the freeway.” My reaction was swift and immediate, “What?!” I was upset for two reasons. First, I was upset because I didn’t even know the front bumper was messed up which only further proves what an unmanly man I really am! Secondly, that was totally unfair!

As Amy knelt down by the damaged front bumper, she pointed out the massive black mark and how the side of the bumper was now detached from the van. Amy again highlighted how I’d hit the tire on the freeway which caused the extensive damage. I was beside myself and did what any normal human being does when getting unfairly blamed, I got defensive! In one quick, reactive statement I retorted Amy’s comment by saying, “And by hit a tire on the freeway, do you mean a car swerved in front of us, cutting us off, and blew a tire which then flew across the ground at blinding speeds and smacked in to our front bumper?”

What did I get for my brilliant argument? A simple, yet profound “Nope, you hit it.” And with that Amy got in the car with a wry smile on her face. The kind of smile that says, “Gotcha.” Luckily we are writing a book on personal responsibility, because as I was getting upset and preparing my “you’re not allowed to blame me” speech, God quietly reminded me that my defensiveness was getting me overly worked up. Amy was clearly messing with me, but I was allowing my pride to cause me to react poorly. This is why defensiveness is so unhelpful in relationships.

We define defensiveness as a person’s attempt to resolve a problem through arguing, explaining away, or being combative. When we argue with someone about the facts surrounding a circumstance, we are being defensive. When conflict occurs between two people, the “remembered” facts of the situation are rarely accurate. It never does us any good to argue facts with our spouse (or anyone for that matter). Discussing the facts only causes defensiveness in the person we are arguing with about the facts!

Explaining away is one of the more popular ways to be defensive. It does not initially appear argumentative or combative, but this could not be further from the truth. Take for example a recent couple we saw in one of our Marriage Restoration Intensives. When we asked the wife what it would take to get her marriage from a 3 to a 10 (1 being horrible and 10 being great) she said, “It would be nice if we could spend more time together at home just hanging out and not working on the computer.” The wife’s voice was calm as she shared her need, but the husband’s reaction was swift. “What do you mean spend more time together at home? When I’m home all you seem to want to do is sit on the couch and watch your favorite shows. How can that be spending time together? I would love to spend more time together at home, but it is not my fault this isn’t happening!”

Can you see the breakdown in communication and the defensiveness? The wife was obviously not feeling like they were spending any time together at home. Her definition of spending time together was clearly different than her husband’s, but her husband reacted poorly by getting upset and defensive. The husband took her need as a direct assault on him, as if he was the person at fault for them not spending any time together. So he fought back with defensiveness by trying to explain away his wife’s opinion.

You know the drill. You get accused of something and you feel that if you could only “convince” your spouse about the inaccuracy of her opinion or experience, things would get better. But things do not get better, ever, when we try to explain away our spouse’s feelings or needs.

Defensiveness causes unhappiness and a breakdown in communication because it escalates the negative emotions we might be experiencing in a conflict (or potential conflict). Have you ever experienced your spouse calming down after being defensive? Probably not, so then why do we keep doing it? Because we are not taking personal responsibility of our emotions and choices. Defensiveness is a direct result of a lack of taking responsibility. Who wants to be told their feelings and needs are inaccurate or wrong? No one does.

So then why do we choose to react defensively even though we know it is not going to help the conflict? In our experience, we have found three reasons why people tend to get defensive:
We get defensive because we are sinful.
There is no escaping our sinfulness. We have already discussed this earlier in the book. But we want to keep reminding you of your brokenness. Not because we want you to feel bad about your sin, but because we want you to be humble and understand your spouse’s needs and feelings. Our sin does not define us, God does. In Genesis we learned that we were created in God’s image. This gives us tremendous value. No other part of God’s creation was given this distinction. So your sin does not define who you are. However, it does impact how you behave and that is where we need to be sensitive, humble, and understanding.
We get defensive because we want to prove we are right or our spouse is wrong.
How many arguments have you gotten in to with your spouse because you wanted to prove something? Does it feel good when your spouse or someone else tries to invalidate your feelings or needs? Probably not, we can all relate to how that might feel. Getting in to a who’s right or who’s wrong conversation is never a good thing. The conflict will only get worse and you will never come together as a team if you are constantly on opposing sides or counsel (like lawyers in a courtroom).
We get defensive because we feel bad that something we did was taken wrong or misunderstood.
This reason for defensiveness can be the hardest one to break. The first two reasons are pretty obvious and make logical sense in terms of their negative impact on a marriage. If we are going to be happy in our marriage, then we have to allow our spouse to feel negatively about something we may have unintentionally done. This seems unfair because why should we be punished for something we did not do? It sounds so logical to try and explain away the unintentional hurt of our spouse. “If only he would listen to me and let me explain what I meant, he would feel better.” But our spouse doesn’t feel better after we have tried to explain away the hurt, does he? We do this as well, and we both know it never seems to make things better.

Even though we unintentionally hurt our spouse, we still hurt our spouse. We must come to grips with this concpet. It does not matter in a court of law if you accidentally kill someone. There’s an actual term for this kind of crime, it’s called manslaughter. Manslaughter is a legal term that says you are guilty of a crime even though you did not mean to do it. Maybe you were being wreckless at the time of the accident or maybe you were distracted for only a second, but if you kill someone you will typically get punished – whether you meant to you or not.

The same is true relationally. It does not matter whether or not you meant to hurt your spouse. The reality is that your spouse is hurting. Take on the hurt and listen to how you can repair it. This is a great way to take personal responsibility and a very simple way to help the marriage succeed.

If defensiveness does not work, then what does? How can you start responding differently to your spouse’s hurt or unmet expectations? Check out the following six ways you can respond differently than being defensive. It is not a comprehensive list, but we do feel like the list contains the more important ways you can respond differently:

1. Respond by validating.

We are going to unpack how to validate your spouse in a chapter all by itself. But we wanted to mention it here because we believe it is so important and is actually the exact opposite of being defensive. Validation means that your spouse is more important to you than proving her wrong or proving yourself right.

2. Respond by listening.

Instead of being defensive, try listening for a change of pace. When you listen, it sends a message to your spouse that he is important and worth zipping your lips shut over. Listening is such an easy way to help calm someone down as long as you are listening well.

Listening well involves eye contact, positive energy, and good posture. Rolling your eyes and letting out sigh after sigh is not a good way to listen. Focus all your attention on your spouse and wait to see how things start to calm down.

3. Asking questions

Instead of being defensive, we can ask questions. Too few couples in the world understand the art of simply asking a question. Open ended questions can be a powerful tool in calming down your spouse. An open ended question sounds like, “It feels like I’ve done something to upset you, can you help me understand what I did?” We use questions all the time when our feelings get hurt or when we are feeling defensive. Questions are a nice way to bring the discussion to a more healthy and rationale level.

4. Just allowing your spouse to have her own opinions

We know you are always right! This is the kind of attitude that can get us in trouble in our marriages. We feel like our opinion is superior to our mate’s and we gladly share the differences making sure to highlight the faulty thinking on our mate’s part. Sometimes we need to allow our mate to have a different opinion. There are times when we need to come to a win/win solution, but there are also times when we need to accept our mate’s different opinion.

5. Getting off the facts and on to the feelings

Defensiveness is rarely ever about facts. We get defensive because we are hurting. We are hurting because a button has been pushed (buttons like feeling rejected, controlled, powerless, like a failure, and disconnected. Buttons are more thoroughly unpacked on our website at www.gosmalley.com/tags/hot-buttons).

Just ask yourself the following questions, “Has focusing on facts ever calmed down my spouse in the past?” The answer is obvious, NO! It is pointless to discuss facts with our spouse, especially when we are feeling defensive. Nothing good is going to come out of the discussion, so we need to take the discussion from facts to feelings. If you are intimidated about sharing feelings, then download our list of “hot buttons” from the website and use that list to help you identify what is really bothering you.

6. As the great Bob Newhart said in the now famous YouTube video from Mad TV, “Stop it!” (You have to see this video if you have not already, it will make so much more sense to you! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLMTvxOaeE)

7. When you can’t “stop it” stop talking
Calling a time-out when things aren’t going well is a healthy step. The key is the clock starts ticking for a time-in when you call it. So when you feel defensive ask for a break. Take some time to calm down and to get an attitude adjustment (prayer works best). After you calm down and hopefully God has humbled you. You will be in a better frame of mind to talk again.

Our hope is that you are recognizing how destructive defensiveness is and that it only makes things worse. Stopping it begins with a decision. You have to decide that defensiveness does not work. Once you have made the decision, the next step is to replace the negative behavior (defensiveness) with something different. You can not stop at deciding you want to stop being deffensive. You must replace past behaviors with new ones.

The rest of our book is giving you a different way to behave to replace the negative patterns that have crept in to your marriage. It is not enough to hate the negative things going on in your marriage. Stay alert throughout the next chapters. Each chapter is a different way to respond to your spouse. These chapters are simple guidelines to help you dramatically impact your marriage.

Remember what you learned in the first chapters. You can make an impact on your marriage. You have more influence than you imagine when it comes to impacting your spouse for the positive. We know some of you reading this book are very happy and satisfied. Congrats! The reason you’re happy is probably because you take the time to read books on relationships and attend events and retreats to better your marriage.

Some of you reading this book are wiped out and are hoping this book will be a miracle for your marriage. Our book can be a miracle, the key is understanding that you are the miracle! There are many helpful resources on how to have a better marriage. We do not hold the patent on great relationships. Remember Jesus’ words spoken and recorded in Matthew. Be the person you want others to be. Be the change. Don’t wait for your spouse to get on the healthy marriage train. Jump on yourself and watch what happens. The happy marriage train is a party! Your spouse will hear all the happy noises emanating from the train and she will want to jump on with you! The more healthy you are, the more your marriage has a chance of succeeding and being satisfied.

You see, it all started the day I was born. Unfortunately, as you learned earlier, we are all born in to sin. This sin manifests itself in many ways. But the one way I want to focus on for this chapter is the sin of blaming. When things go wrong in marriage it is easy to look across the kitchen table and focus on all the things our spouse is doing wrong to make the marriage miserable. But reality is that we are both doing things wrong and by focusing on Michael’s brokenness, I made things worse.

One of my most favorite things to say in those first six months of marriage was, “I wouldn’t be so angry and yell if you wouldn’t “¦..”ť Another way to say this was, “You make me yell! I don’t want to yell, but you keep messing up!”ť I had convinced myself that I was a victim of Michael’s unhealth. I truly believed that I was in the right to yell because Michael was making mistakes left and right. In essence, if Michael would only behave I would not have to yell. In my mind, I was actually being forced to yell at Michael. I was not my fault, but Michael’s fault! Whew, this meant that I was as good of a person as I thought I was. Blaming Michael meant that I was less at fault for our bad marriage. The only problem was that the relief I felt for blaming Michael only seemed to make our marriage worse. This attitude of mine did not help the marriage, it hurt the marriage. The problem with sin is that everyone has a problem with it. Which means that I was equally at fault for what was going on in my marriage. I was not a victim of Michael’s unhealth, I was a victim of my own unhealth.

When we say, “It’s not my fault!”ť, we take on the attitude of blaming. In this chapter we want to unpack blaming and show you how it destroys the chance of a happy marriage. Let’s start our exploration of blaming with the first person to ever blame. Adam. In one of the greatest examples of blaming to ever be recorded Adam said to God in response to getting caught eating the apple, “The Woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it.”ť What an awesome example of blaming! The eating of the apple was the first mistake man ever made, and with the first mistake ever made man chose to blame both God and women! Very little has changed since Adam uttered the first blame. But how interesting that the first sin was also accompanied by the first blame.

As Adam was faced with his own mistake, he reached down deep inside himself and pulled out “the woman you gave me”ť. The God of the universe, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything had just asked Adam if he’d eaten from the tree he was told not to eat from. Instead of taking responsibility for his action, Adam chose to blame. And not just blame, but actually accuse God of being the real culprit behind his own mistake! It wasn’t enough for Adam to simply pass blame on to his wife, he also tried to get out of trouble by blaming God! “You made her God, so if you hadn’t made this woman I would never have eaten that apple. I don’t want to blame you God, I’m just saying…”ť As Mike Golic from ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning radio show would say, “Just stop it!”ť Stop it. These are powerful words when dealing with the blame game. Ben Reaoch wrote a great article on blaming for John Piper’s blog. Reaoch wrote, “Making excuses like this is arrogant and foolish. It’s a proud way of trying to justify our actions and pacify our guilty consciences. And it keeps us from humbling ourselves before God to repent of our sins and seek his forgiveness.”ť[i]

Why doesn’t blaming work? Why did it hurt us during our first six months of marriage? Because blaming disconnects us from God and others. Blaming is a reflection of our pride. It is our pride that will prevent us from seeing the truth in our marriage. The truth that we are just as messed up as our spouse. We like to say there are two kinds of people in this world. Those people who are “normally dysfunctional”ť and those people who are “specially dysfunctional”ť. Notice how there is no one free from dysfunction. There are just different levels of dysfunction. Normal dysfunction is like you and us. Normal people trying to make their way in the world and trying to do the right thing. Specially dysfunctional people are those who do the truly evil things in life. James 1:13-15 says:

Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.”ť God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way.14 The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust.15 Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.

James leaves us with our own junk. We are never allowed to blame God or others for our actions. We must take full responsibility for how we respond to people and circumstances. When we take responsibility for our acitons we are humbling ourselves before God and man. Our marriage can thrive because we are taking on the burden of creating an environment for our marriage to succeed. We want to be happy, so we choose to be happy. We don’t allow the foolishness of our spouse’s mistakes to impact us beyond the immediate.

But why does it feel so good to blame our spouse for the problems in our marriage? We deal with this very issue when couples in crisis come to our Marriage Restoration Intensive program here in Houston. Couples come from all over the country to get help with their marriage. Almost 100% of these couples come because something is wrong with their marriage and their spouse. We can not think of a person who has come to an intensive with the attitude of, “this is what I have done wrong.”ť It is almost always something more like, “This is what my spouse has done wrong.”ť There are three main reasons why people love to blame their spouse for a broken marriage:

It comes quite natural to us. (Genesis 3:12)
It makes us feel better about ourselves
It takes the focus off our own sinfulness.

We have already discussed how blaming is a natural reaction to sin. Adam provided a great example of blaming in action. Because God created us with the freedom to choose, we could choose poorly. Blaming is a poor choice to any situation. It only leads to further problems and heartache.

Blaming makes us feel better about ourselves because we can justify our response to sin against us. When our spouse does something that is wrong, and then we choose to react poorly, we can feel bad about our poor reaction. However, if we blame our spouse for our bad reaction, we do not have to feel as bad. Unfortunately, this does not last very long because it is a flawed response. Feeling better because of blaming our spouse does not work. It actually leads to even worse feelings of bitterness and unforgiveness. The cycle of blaming does not improve our situation, it always makes it worse.

Lastly, when we blame our spouse for the problems in our marriage, it takes the focus off our sinfulness and puts it on the sinfulness of our spouse. This kind of thinking leads to us being judgmental. If you ever read anything Christ said in the New Testament, you know that being judgmental is the last thing you want to be:

“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eyes when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend,s `Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye. “Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you. (Matthew 7:1-6 NLT)

Blaming does not work because it keeps the cycle of sin spiraling out of control. Our spouse will treat us the way we are treating our spouse. Jesus’ words in Matthew are so important. When we worry about the sin in our spouse we are merely highlighting our own sin! In fact, Jesus goes so far as to say that our sin is worse than the sin of the person we are focusing on. We can not waste valuable energy focusing on what is wrong with our spouse. We need to save that energy to use on our own problems. The more energy we use focusing on our spouse, the less energy we have to deal with our own stuff.
This is the reality for any person in a marriage, “It is my fault.”ť No matter what is going on in the marriage, we can always find something we could have done better. We are not blaming you for mistakes your spouse makes.

All we are trying to say is that by focusing on your spouse’s mistakes, you are making the marriage less happy and making yourself more vulnerable to the consequences of blaming. We need to start asking ourselves, “What could I have done differently? How do I need to change in my life to make this marriage better?”ť

When we can ask these questions, we are on our way to a happy marriage.
[i]http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1281_12_Sins_We_Blame_on_Others/

“Can you fix this marriage in 30 second or less?”

Wow. We would like to fancy ourselves as talented and productive relationship consultants, but this guy was asking for a miracle; and he was serious. Thirty seconds or less? Are you kidding? But then it hit us, like Mike Tyson hitting Michael Spinks, but it took less than 92 seconds for us to come up with his answer. “You want to fix your marriage in 30 seconds or less? Then start with changing yourself and decide to be a loving, supportive, active, and growing husband.”

Not surprisingly, he didn’t take to our answer. This guy is like a lot of people in our country. America is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave, but more accurately the land of the irresponsible and home of the no fault lawsuit; the demise of our relationships is are the proof.
If you are wanting a book that will give you excuses, then you can stop reading now. If you are wanting a book that will coddle you and make you feel better about yourself, then stop reading now. It’s about time we all start growing up. Being an adult does not mean things become easier, in fact, it really means things become more difficult because, as adults, we are responsible for all of our own actions and feelings. We can no longer be victims, like we were as children, but instead we must start assuming the power of one which is the simple solution to a happy marriage.

One of our favorite first lines when working with a client in a clinical setting is, “What brings you in today.” We’re not the first people to ask this question, but it does have special meaning for us. “What brings you in today” is at the heart of many people’s issues. How people typically respond to this question will tell us a lot of how successful they will be in getting helped. If they start listing a long line of issues about their spouse as the reason they are coming to one of our Marriage Restoration Intensives, then we know we are in a battle. The problem with your marriage, however, is not your long list of issues or complaints about your spouse. Honestly, it is the level at which each of you is willing to take responsibility for the problems in the marriage. Issues are just issues. Couples are stressed out in their marriage because neither is willing to do the right thing (unless the other is willing to do it first).

What brings you to reading this book today? Are you frustrated in love? Does your spouse not meet your needs like you want? Do you feel alone, rejected, or disconnected? Has life turned out to be one huge disappointing experience after another? What brings you to reading this book today?
Be careful with your answer. It’s an important question. If you answer, “My spouse… my child… my boss…” Then you’re not ready for the following pages. In fact, they might even upset the very core of your being.

This book is not about what your spouse must do so you can enjoy a satisfied and happy marriage. This book is about learning what YOU can do to help create an environment where a satisfied and happy marriage is possible.

We are not slaves to our past. We have a choice. We do not become angry because someone says something mean. We do not get sad because someone says something hurtful. Every emotion we display is our choice. Let us say this another way, we decide whether or not we are going to be upset, sad, frustrated, mad, or hurt.

We are in control of our own destinies and emotion. People, places, or things do not make us unhappy in life. We choose to feel unhappy as a result of what happens around us. We will address this concept in much more depth later on in chapter seven. But it is important to note here, at the beginning of this book. You can choose how you respond to circumstances.

We know you can not control what happens to you by other people. If you catch your spouse in an affair, your initial reaction will be your gut reaction. Your gut reaction is what’s natural to you. We are not talking about controlling what initially happens to you when faced with hardships or heartache. We are talking about controlling how you move forward and how you respond to tough circumstances. If someone says something mean to me (Amy), it is natural for me to feel hurt – initially. But if I go home and then take out my frustration or hurt on my kids or husband, then that is my fault. If I loose sleep that night because I’m still ruminating over what happened to me earlier in the day, then that is my fault.

The old saying that it takes two to save a marriage could not be more wrong. We’ve seen marriages experience the warmth and grace God intended because one spouse decided to make a change, which always results in the marriage, or any relationship for that matter, experiencing real change – and usually in a positive manner.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the story from a Turkish village that was devastated by an earthquake. Earlier in the morning before the quake hit the village, a young father had dropped his son off at school. It was just like any other day, and like all the days before, the father told his tiny son, “I’ll be back to pick you up after school.” The little boy always made him promise. “Promise?” the boy said to his reassuring father. “Yes, son, I promise.”

The village had experienced much violence from the various clans fighting in the area and children were often afraid they would not see their parents after school, it had happened many times before. The earth quake hit some time in the middle of the school day, and it was ferocious. The earth moved with such force that every building in the village was completely destroyed, including the elementary where the father had dropped his son off that morning.

The entire village headed for what remained of the collapsed school. When people started arriving they were met with horror. The school, once a haven for protecting the children, was no longer.
But the worst part was not the sight of the fallen school or the total devastation from the earthquake, no, the worst part was that there were no screams to be heard from the rubble. No moans or cries from children trapped in the wreckage, only the terrifying silence after the storm.

Immediately rescue workers and parents began to remove the stones and splintered wood beams to try and find any survivors; including the young father who had promised his son he would return to pick him up.

Hour after hour the hopes of a village sank as one dead child after another was pulled from the pile of debris. Soon parents and rescue workers began to lose hope that any survivors would be found. After a full 24 hours of continuous digging, many families and friends began to disappear along with their hopes of finding their precious children. All the families but one. The little boy’s father was still digging.

After 48 hours many of the rescue workers were leaving the site and they begged the young father stop hoping and accept the fact that his son was dead. But the father would not hear any of them. He had made a promise to his son, and no one could pull him from the rubble. All he had for sustenance the last 48 hours was what little water people had offered him. His fingers, hands, elbows, and knees were bleeding and cut to the bone from the continual lifting and moving of the heavy stones.
It had now been almost three days since the tragic earthquake destroyed the elementary school. No one was left digging except that young father. People in the village had accepted the fact that this young father was going to die on that pile of rubble along with the children. But the father was determined. Several rescue workers watched as the father continued to dig, tears streaming down his face, desperate to find his son who he had promised to see again.

When out of the dust and chaos the young father heard a slight, but proud voice come from beneath the rubble, “Daddy? Is that you daddy?” The little boy heard the digging from above him, where he and 19 of his classroom friends had survived the quake because of a God-inspired pocket of space and clean air.

“Yes! Son, it is me your father!” The young man could hardly believe his ears. But his energy quickly renewed and he kept digging toward the voice of his little boy who was telling his classmates, “See. I told you my daddy would come for us. He promised me he would.”

That is the power of one (or personal responsibility) and the simple solution to a happy marriage. You can not hope that your spouse does the work that you need to do. If you want your relationship to be better, then be better yourself. The power of one is about understanding that you have tremendous influence over relationship when you focus of your energy on being the kind of person you want your spouse to be.

The following pages will reveal to you how to take personal responsibility in your most important relationship on earth, your marriage. They will guide you to a better understanding of yourself and what is behind people who take the power of one. Jesus once said, “do unto other as you would have done unto you.” This little book is that message. Do for your spouse what you want done to you.
“The trouble is not with the law but with me, because I am sold into slavery, with sin as my master. I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate.” Reference?

These are Paul’s words as written in Romans chapter seven, and these are the words of the suffering. Not the impoverished who suffer, but rather the people like you and us who suffer every day – every week – trying to get our relationship to a place where it brings us happiness. We want to do the right thing, but yet we still manage to make a mess of things. We struggle, we fall, we humiliate ourselves all in the pursuit of a happy marriage. What makes this book a simple solution to a happy marriage is that it taps in to one of the biggest themes of the Bible. Personal responsibility. God does not do the work for us when it comes to salvation. Salvation is ours because we choose to believe that Jesus is who He said He is. The bible does not promote victims, the bible promotes strength, courage, perseverance, righteousness, patience, kindness, mercy, grace, selflessness, hope, and much, much more. What is the theme that binds all of this together? Personal responsibility. None of the things God asks of us is possible without us taking action and doing it ourselves. The same is true for marriage. A great marriage is not because you are compatible or married the one and only person on earth that was right for you. Great marriages happen because two individuals do the work to make the marriage great.

All we are asking of you through this book is to take a look at what you can do to make a difference in your marriage. We wish we could develop some magical pill to make your marriage the absolute best, but alas, that kind of pill is not possible. What we can do is show you how to behave better and to take the power of your own change to make a positive impact on the marriage. Does this book guarantee a happy marriage? No. There are no guarantees and anyone who tries to sell you that line is a liar. But we can assure you that if you take the time to get as healthy as possible, you will change. When you change your spouse will take notice.

As we once wrote in the DNA of Relationships, God created all of us for relationships. That is the good news! We crave, at the very fiber of our being, to be in relationship with others. Personal responsibility is so important because when we start behaving well toward others (especially our spouse), how do you think they will respond? Will they get mad because you are treating them so well? Probably not. More than likely your spouse or others will respond in kind. They will treat you well because they are being treated well. It’s the results of the Golden Rule! The old saying, “What goes around comes around”, is not just a statement for bad things. This statement works for those who choose to do good things. Loving your spouse to the best of your ability can only end up well. Even if it takes time, hang in there and keep learning how to do the right thing. This book is about doing the right thing. The more you know how to behave and handle yourself in different situations, the better your relationships will be. In fact, one of the cool things we are doing throughout this book is giving your “Simple Solution Scenarios”. These scenarios are every day examples of how to apply the lessons being learned throughout this book. Hopefully you will be able to relate to them on a deep and real level. We will write out a typical scenario in marriage where things could go horrible wrong (i.e. like finding out about an affair) and then we will walk you through how to apply the pages of this book to the specific situation.

You will also find a study guide at the back of the book as well. This study guide is an incredibly important piece of this book and the health and happiness of your marriage. The study guide is meant for a small group. You will learn later on in the book how important a small group is to your marriage, but if you are already involved in a small group then please encourage your group to go through this book together. The study guide will give you helpful discussion questions and it will highlight the most important concepts we want you to get from each chapter.

You are now ready to begin a Simple Solution to a Happy Marriage. If you feel resistence resistant to reading the this book, then just know there are forces which do not want you to be successful in your marriage. Resist! Keep moving forward and keep learning everything you can to make yourself a better lover, wife, husband, father, or mother. In fact, let’s start with a simple prayer to make sure you begin this book with the right mindset and the proper protection:

Dear heavenly Father, forgive me of my sins against You and my marriage (feel free to pray any specific sins that God brings to your mind at this moment). Father, I ask for protection as I read this book. If there is anything that wants to distract from the truth, then I ask that you keep it away. Father, help me keep an open heart and an open mind to Your will. I want your will done in my life and my marriage. Amen.”

Friends, suffer no more! Experience the life changing freedom of a simple solution to a happy marriage.

If you watch the news or read the tabloids, then you are well aware of the issues plaguing Jon and Kate from the hit reality show Jon and Kate plus 8. We’ve been contacted by several friends telling us to offer to help them with one of our Marriage Restoration Intensives. Unfortunately, we do not know them or how to get in contact with them.

So I felt like I should write this tip. First of all, do not believe anything you read in the tabloids. I have several close friends who are tabloid magnets, in a major way, and I can assure you that the rumors and lies spread through the tabloids are obscene and totally false! Who knows what is really going on with Jon and Kate, and I would suggest we all hold on assumptions until we hear it directly from them.

What advice would I give Jon and Kate? Ask for help. If you need help, then reach out and search someone who can help you avoid divorce (if that is really what is happening for them). The worst mistake couples make when they are facing a trial in their marriage is when they shut out the world and begin believing they are the only ones hurting. Lots of couples are hurting and we all need to be more authentic with our pain.

The second bit of advice I would give to Jon and Kate would be to slow down and take a step back. When your marriage is in trouble, the best thing you can do is to figure what you have done to contribute. The more you point fingers and blame your spouse, the worse your marriage is going to get. Take personal responsibility for your own actions. This will cause your spouse to relax and it will create an opportunity for self-reflection.

We need to handle ourselves in the best way possible, and if we do not, then we need to take complete ownership of our mistakes. I believe personal responsibility is a major key to this challenge. If we do not take ownership of our actions and our responses, then this challenge will be a failure. Try not to give your spouse something to complain about through poor choices or attitudes.