Marriage Isn’t For You: Words From Seth Adam Smith
Marriage Isn’t For You: Words From Seth Adam Smith
“Having been married only a year and a half, I’ve recently come to the conclusion that marriage isn’t for me.” This is how Seth Adam Smith began his blog.
This opening line, of course, might panic readers who fear that Seth has stumbled into a dark stage of life, where he’s decided to abandon his wife.
But you’ll relax when you see where he takes it:
My dad giving his response to my concerns was such a moment for me. With a knowing smile he said, “Seth, you’re being totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple: marriage isn’t for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family. Not just for the in-laws and all of that nonsense, but for your future children. Who do you want to help you raise them? Who do you want to influence them? Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.”
It was in that very moment that I knew that Kim was the right person to marry. I realized that I wanted to make her happy; to see her smile every day, to make her laugh every day. I wanted to be a part of her family, and my family wanted her to be a part of ours. And thinking back on all the times I had seen her play with my nieces, I knew that she was the one with whom I wanted to build our own family.
I love simple re-framing techniques like this; ideas that help us find perspective as we work at the various challenges in our lives.
In fact, my recent book The Well Balanced World Changer: A Field Guide to Staying Sane While Doing Good, contains a similar marriage-turning idea.
There may come a moment when a husband looks at his partner, sick and disheveled and crying her eyes out, and thinks, I can’t believe I married this person. Or a moment when a wife, exhausted by her husband’s recent failure to contribute buries her face in her hands and declares, This marriage is doomed. He does not make me happy!
One simple idea I took from an author which not only applies to marriage, but perhaps re-frames how we look at all relationships in our lives:
What if God did not bring this person into your life solely to make you happy? What if God also put them there to make you holy?
What if marriage is not just about you having a perfect life? What if it’s about becoming a more perfect person?
You can get the Well Balanced World Changer on Kindle or the Nook for just $3.03-3.99. Or get the paperback here.
Read more of Seth’s blog post here.