Devotion for Marriages – 33) Annoying Habits & Selfishness
Annoying Habits are habits or behaviors that irritate or bother our spouse.
Some examples of annoying habits:
- Lack of personal hygiene and acting like a slob
- Picking your nose in public
- How we use the toothpaste – not squeezing in proper order
- How we use the toilet – husband not lifting up the seat and leaving urine stains
- Refusing to replace an empty toilet roll
- Leaving dirty and smelly socks around the house
- Making embarrassing, humiliating or degrading remarks regarding our spouse in public
- Taking too long to get ready to leave the house – usually the wife
- Spending too much time on the phone or computer
- Nagging
Whether it is intentional or not, our behavior will affect the love we have for each other. Once we realize that we have habits that are legitimately annoying, repulsive and irritating our spouse and hurting our marriage, we should try to eliminate them. Otherwise our marriage would not be what either of us want it to be.
Most spouses view annoying habits as a lack of respect and they can lead to a lack of romance in a marriage. It is call ‘deromanticisation’. Annoying habits will lead your Love Bank into bankruptcy.
In fact, study has revealed that the more times your spouse irks you by repeating disgusting and ill-mannered habits, the more irked you become. Wet towels on the bathroom floor cause mild irritation. But the reaction gets stronger each time it happens. Through repeated exposure it may produce a social allergy — a reaction of hypersensitive annoyance or disgust.
Many of us engage in annoying habits because we don’t feel what our spouse feels or we don’t care how our spouse feels when we do them. If we truly want to stay in love, then we must pay close attention to the way we affect each other.
Lk.6:31 – “And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise”
Meet our spouse’s emotional needs as we would want our spouse to meet ours. If we want our spouse to continuously find us irresistible, we must commit to become experts in meeting their emotional needs and in avoiding anything that will cause withdrawals from their love bank account.
Selfishness
Selfishness is a destructive attitude of expecting our spouse to do things that would benefit us at their expenses. Sometimes we even threaten ‘punishment’ if our wishes are refused. We use phrases like “you better do this or else…”
Our sinful nature created in us a ‘taker instinct”. We want to do whatever we can to make ourselves happy even if it makes others unhappy. This is especially true in the marriage relationship and lesser in other relationships as we are more of our ‘real self’ at home. Many people tend to give their best to others but their worst self to family members.
Selfishness is one of the greatest enemies of intimacy. If Satan is the external enemy, then selfishness is the internal enemy of intimacy.
James 3:16 – “For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing will be there”
James 4:1-2 – “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?
Be a servant lover rather than a selfish lover. If we truly want to serve God through serving others, first learn to serve our spouse. Don't ask what your spouse can do for you but rather what you can do for your spouse, to make her more godly and happy.
Phil.2:3 – “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit (excessive pride in oneself, self-love, self-regard) but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others”
Make request and not demand. Seek to understand instead of being understood. Seek first the interest of others; understand their needs, wants, and concerns. When our spouse refuses to meet our needs, we have the tendency to withdraw or lash out in anger. Our anger or withdrawal pushes our spouse further away and makes it more difficult for her to respond and express love to us.
This is when unconditional love becomes exceedingly important – make emotional deposits until our spouse changes. Many people say “There is no perfect marriage”. We beg to differ, there is a ‘perfect marriage’ but only if we learn how to love perfectly!