Approach Marriage with Humility

One of the most important things I’ve learned in my marriage is the importance of Humility. I’ve come to realize that it’s more important for me to get along with my husband than to be “right”. Sometimes it’s best to just accept the fact that we don’t always know what’s best and our spouse may have some insight as to what could be better.

President Ezra Taft Benson said,

“Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted in ourselves.”

I’ll be honest, before I got married I really struggled with pride. I didn’t realize it at the time but now, looking back, it’s very obvious to me that I was often prideful.

When I was a teenager I was very stubborn and tended to argue with my siblings, parents, and even occasionally my sibling’s spouses. I’m ashamed to say that at that point in my life I wasn’t very sensitive of their feelings and didn’t really care about anything that didn’t pertain to me. Thankfully I can say that I’ve changed and I no longer act as rude and selfishly as I did then. I realize now that I was very prideful, but I like to give myself at least a little bit of a break and say that I was just being teenager.

Naturally I’ve grown up a little bit since then, but I really feel that the love I have for my husband is what has contributed the most to me becoming less prideful.

I’m not perfect, but I have worked very hard to try to be more humble, particularly when it comes to the occasional argument with my husband.

The first few months of my marriage I went through a lot of changes which included, marriage of course, living with his family due to lack of finances, I began taking online classes, and I moved across the country from all of my family not knowing when I’d have the chance to see them again.

Due to my stress I felt with all of the changes I was experiencing I felt more irritable which often caused contention between my husband and myself. At first I approached our disagreements with the attitude that it was something I needed to “win” which is pride.

C.S. Lewis said,

“Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love or contentment or even common sense.”

Over time I came to realize that I needed to make an effort to humble myself because if I’m being prideful then I’m not being very fair or loving toward my husband.

Since I made a conscious effort to change my approach and humble myself, my attitude improved which also resulted in improving my overall relationship with my husband.

H. Wallace Goddard said,

“Humility is the friend of truth. Humility opens us up to the experience of others and to truth from heaven.”

No one is perfect, but I challenge you to put forth an honest effort to humble yourself and take your spouse’s views into consideration.