How To Live Happily ever After …. yeah ….. you can.

First, how to NOT live the happily ever after:

1. Be Selfish
a. Everything needs to revolve around you. If you find something you like to do that ignores your spouse’s or your significant others feelings and interests, go ahead and to it. Too bad if they don’t like it! You only go around once in life, go grab all the gust you can get.

2. Pick at each other
a. If you know something that annoys your spouse, be sure and do it and do it with intentionality.
b. Be critical of everything they do.
c. Always get the last word in when arguing.

3. Show disrespect
a. Call them names in public and be sure and use the words like “stupid, fat, weak, and loser.”
b. Complain about them. Women be sure and straighten him out when he makes a mistake – especially in front of others. Lecture him and ridicule him.

4. Refuse to meet emotional needs
a. Wives totally ignore your husband need for sex and time alone with you.
b. Girlfriends totally ignore your boyfriends need for admiration and support.
c. Husbands never show you wife you love and appreciate her.
d. Husbands make her constantly worry about the finances.
e. Boyfriends, totally ignore your girlfriends need for you to be honest and supportive.

5. Treat others better than him/her
a. Whatever you do be sure and shower those around you with messages of encouragement, cards, and uninterrupted time alone. If you want to trash the relationship never do this for the special person in your life.

6. Men, be a pansy
a. Retreat into safety and passivity.
b. Refuse to take the initiative or responsibility in making plans or suggestions

7. Women, act like his mother
a. Make sure you do everything to make him feel like a three-year old.
b. Tell him how to live his live down to the smallest detail.
c. Be sure and say, “I told you so” whenever possible.

8. Whenever you are angry
a. Blow up. Hold a grudge. Hold it in. Bring up past mistakes. Lose verbal control and completely destroy him/her.

I don’t think any of us enter into a relationship with the goal of seeing how terrible we can make it for the other person. We are just naturals at:

• Focusing on the other persons negative traits
• Concentrating on their failures and flaws
• Assuming the worst in the other person.

We usually do these things to the people we love the most.

No matter how much you prepare for marriage, or how much you think you know about the other person, we still enter into a relationship with some unrealistic views of each other combined with some highly impractical expectations. All of us want our own “happily ever after”. For anyone who has been married for any length of time – you realize that is a lot of hard work.

My wife and I have been married for over two decades (almost three at the time of this writing),  I never intended to hurt her and she never intended to hurt me. We never intended to keep a record of wrongs. We never intended to disrespect one another – it just happened. It was the natural thing to do. At least for me, I realized I was thinking the wrong way.

We tend to forget that all of us fall short. There is no one on this earth who can meet your expectations. You can’t even meet your own expectations. There is no one on this earth who is going to behave exactly the way you want them to behave. So, how do you handle the chasm, the gulf between our expectations and the other person’s behavior?  How do you stay in love with someone when they don’t meet your expectations and they don’t behave the way you think they should behave?

Look at Philippians 4:8
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

The Message says it this way, 8-9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

If you want to stay in love and you want a happily ever after:

• Focus on the best and not the worst
• Focus on the beautiful and not the ugly
• Focus on the things to praise not the things to curse.

In other words, start thinking in a different way. Instead of trying to change them, except their shortcomings. Love their flaws. Sort of like this wife did for her husband. (watch this 40 second video).

We have a tendency to focus on the worst, the ugly, and curse them when the other person is wrong. This is not only true in marriage relationships but its’ also true in our relationships at work, with our kids, and even with people in the church.

Every negative quality in the other person ……
Every failure that person has …….
Every flaw that person has …..

IS THE OPPORTUNITY TO LOVE THEM.

There is the story of a brilliant husband who attached this note to the insurance card in his wife’s car: “if you are reading this, you have been in an accident. I just wanted to let you know that you are far more valuable than this car.” His wife did get in an accident and found this note. How do you think it made her feel? Probably the same way you felt when you read the note. I am sure that evening was a “happily ever after” moment for both of them.

In Marcus Buckingham’s book, “One Thing to Know”, they discovered the one thing that makes a makes a relationship successful . They studied couples who has been happily married for 10+ years. They thought they would discover that each person had a deep understanding of the other person. They thought these couples would understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They thought they wouldn’t have high expectations of their spouse because they knew each other so well. They expected to find that they had realistic expectations of each other. What they discovered in these “happily – married – every – after” couples is that they had a very unrealistic view of each other. When they tested each spouse , each spouse rated the other spouse higher than themselves.  Their discovery: a spouse’s illusion created an upward spiral of love. To put it in common terms: – love is a bit blind.

Scripture teaches us, “love covers a multitude of sins.” (I Peter 4:8) The scriptures continue to teach us in Philippians 4:8 that these “happily ever after” couples fixed their thoughts on the right, true, noble, honorable, lovely, admirable, and  pure qualities of the other person.

Paul is teaching us,  if we focus on the true, honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable it creates a positive illusion about the person we are in love with. Every failure, every flaw, every negative quality you think the other person has is an opportunity to put Philippians 4:8 in to action. 

A couple of blog entries ago, I shared the story of the wife who wanted to divorce her husband. She went to her pastor and her pastor told her that the best way to get him back is to go back and serve and make him think he is special then lower the boom.  She did as the pastor suggested. The pastor didn’t hear from her in a while so he called her. He asked if she had asked for a divorce. She promptly responded, “no way, I found out I was still in love with him.”

Paul goes on to say, if you want to stay in love, if  you want the happily ever after – think.

“Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

• Think about what you want to be remembered for.
• Think about what you want the relationship to look like.
• Think about how you want to be loved and love the other person like that.
• Think about why you got into a relationship with them in the first place.

Luke also gives us a glimpse of what it takes to stay in love. It is so simple it is brilliant. It is so profound it is one of the most difficult for many to do.

Luke 6:31
31 Do to others as you would like them to do to you.

If you want to have the “happily ever after” you need to ask the question – How do you want to be loved in the relationship? Then go and love the other person just like that. If the other person hurts you, love them the way you would want to be loved after you have hurt them. If they disappoint you , love them the way you would want to be loved after you have disappointed them.

It only takes 4 minutes to fall in love. If you really want the happily after – it begins by getting our loves in order. (Revelation 2) The first relationship everyone needs to work on is their relationship with Christ because that affects how you love others.

Christ changes the way we think.
Christ changes our attitude towards others.

When you understand how much He loves you. When you examine the disappointment He went through. When you examine the hurt and pain He went through. When you look at the sacrifice He gave,  it will change the way you love other people.

He willingly humbled himself.
He sacrificed himself.
He made himself a slave.
Why? To show us what love looked like.

We can only love others as much as we understand how much God loves us. Because God is love.

1 John 4:19
We love each other because he loved us first.

He wants to be our first love. He tells us to seek first the kingdom of God. He tells us to love him with all our heart, mind, and soul. He tells us in Revelation 2 that everything hinges on God being our first love. When we work on that relationship we learn how to love another person.

So … how is your relationship with him?