Pride Is An Enemy To Marriage

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we are all aware that the natural man is an enemy to God. Along these same lines, pride is an enemy to marriage. It drives couples away from rather than turning toward one another in love and unity. In his monumental address, "Beware of Pride," Ezra Taft Benson stated, "Unity is impossible for a proud people, and unless we are one, we are not the Lord's." If we are not careful, we will find ourselves guilty of pointing out the faults in our spouse instead of working on our own imperfections.

In the book, "Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage," H. Wallace Goddard shares an example of a newly married woman who learned that an exercise to strengthen marriage was to share regularly the things that they found annoying with each other. So, she sat down with her husband and volunteered to go first. She proceeded to tell him how much she disliked the way he ate a grapefruit because he ate it like you would an orange, by peeling it first. She just couldn't understand how she could be expected to live with someone who ate a grapefruit like this. It was then his turn to share his displeasure of her. He hesitated and then sweetly told his companion that quite frankly he couldn't think of anything at all that he didn't like about her. She was shocked and felt terrible for her unkind words and how frivolous this was.

The opposite of pride is humility. When we are humble, we are teachable. When we are teachable, we are willing to work toward making our marriage a celestial one. Putting our spouse's needs and interests before our own and turning toward each other will help us stay on the right path of strengthening our marriage.  We will learn to overlook the unimportant things that bother us and instead focus on the ways we are blessed to be eternal companions.

References:

Benson, E. T. (1989, April 1). Beware of Pride. Retrieved from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/1989/05/beware-of-pride?lang=eng

Goddard, W. L. (2009). Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage. Cedar Hills, UT: Joymap Publishing. doi:ISBN: 9781441486547