While my fiancée and I obviously are not married we definitely feel like we are in a lot of ways based on the kind of experiences we have already run into—and we don't deny that God is already weaving us together; I mean, come on, honestly, do you really think God waits until you say "I do" and then He's like "Oh! Okay, now I can finally work you two together!" Maybe it works that way for some, but certainly not us. Anyway, I digress... It's said that one of the reasons why marriage can be so difficult is that it causes you to look into a mirror and come face-to-face with the reality of your own shortcomings. And that has certainly been happening a lot throughout my relationship with Julia.
One of the personal problems I have come to discover about myself stems from my primary personality trait. My primary personality trait is to be a servant. Now, someone may read that and think that is an excellent quality to have, but the problem is that it has some very negative side effects... if I let it. And of course, being a human being... I let it, pretty often.
One negative side effect in being "servant-hearted" is that, while I take pleasure in serving others... I don't really let anyone serve me. Not because I pridefully don't accept charity, but instead it's a fear of inconveniencing people. It's a strange assumption on my part that someone would be serving me out of obligation, and not because they genuinely want to do so. Which, of course, is very silly of me. It almost seems like an assumption on my part that I am the only person on Earth who takes pleasure in serving and that surely no one else does.
Julia actually "lectured" me on this a few days ago—which, I am glad she did—and made a very good argument that is helping me to try harder at allowing others to do things for me. She told me that she wants to learn to be more servant-hearted, but if I don't give her the opportunity to do so, how will she learn? So of course I couldn't argue with that and had to bite my lip and allow her to do something for me :)
There is another negative side effect, and this is the one that has the potential to be more dangerous. Other fears I have when it comes to relationships with other people are as follows:
1. I don't want to disappoint people
2. I don't want to upset or hurt the feelings of anyone
3. I don't want people to look down on me or reject me
How can these fears manifest themselves in my servant-heartedness? Well the way in which I have seen them play out the most in my relationship with my fiancée... is that I don't let myself be entirely open with her. If I have messed up, or if something related to her or something she did affected me negatively, my fear of hurting her or being rejected by her causes me to keep silent.
This is bad. Very bad. And for several reasons. First off, she and I made a commitment pretty early on in our relationship that we wanted to always be open and honest with each other, no matter how much pain it may cause. So when I let my fears control me it causes me to break the promise she and I made to each other. But the greater danger this character flaw has is that it can very easily turn into "Beachball Syndrome."
In the ocean, or in a pool, if you take a beachball and push it down underwater it's not going to stay there. In fact it is going to explode up and out, like a volcanic eruption. Suppressing my openness and honesty with Julia can (and has at least once or twice) eventually lead to emotional "eruptions", which can cause more pain than the pain that would have been caused had there been openness and honesty in the beginning. Now... just in case you read that and get worried: they weren't angry eruptions. It was more me getting super-explosively upset.
That's one of the reasons why Julia and I made the commitment, because we knew that, while being open and honest has the potential to be painful, the pain is always short-lived and you work through it together, pretty easily. However, pain that is the result of an eruption because of suppressed emotion... that can be a little harder to work through. Thank God in the couple times it's happened, Julia and I have worked through it.
One of the things I am trying to do is put myself in Julia's shoes. If I knew she wasn't being entirely open or honest with me about something, even if it was something that would be painful for me to hear, yeah, I would feel a little hurt. So I have to remember that. A lot of this, between the serving others thing and being open and honest thing require me to slip out of my shoes and into the other person's and think about how I would feel were the roles reversed.
I know this is going to be a tough lesson to learn, but I am determined to learn it! If I truly care about Julia, I will fight to learn.
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