Welcome to the last week in this series, I hope you are
enjoying it as much as I am. This week we are talking about being honest and
dependable. Honest is defined as free of deceit and untruthful, sincere.
Dependable is being truthful and reliable. Now these are two very basic traits of being a
decent human so I am going to try and explain the importance of it in your
marriage.
Honest
As a wife sometimes we feel that it is alright to omit a
little detail of a story or not mention we did something, with the thought of
if they don’t know it won’t hurt them.
But that is just not true it is never beneficial to your marriage to
lie, ever. We have a rule in our
marriage completely honest, the only time its ok to keep a secret from the
other is if it a surprise for them such as birthdays, Christmas, etc. other
than that there are no secrets between us.
Marriage is a safe place of openness and understanding, so there should
be no fear of telling the truth.
The 4 Parts of Honesty
1. Emotional Honesty- your emotional reactions, negative and
positive ones. Share these with your
husband of things that go on in your life, and with the actions he does.
2. Historical Honesty- share information about your past
especially the ones that demonstrate your weakness and failures. Don’t wait for him to ask about them share
them openly, this would be something that would happen during dating. Or if you
didn’t share the whole truth while dating and you are newly married or even
years into it, tell him. Be honest with what happened, even if you cheated on
someone, you cheated on them, you never liked a gift he got you. Tell him open
up that honest communication it is so important.
3. Current Honesty- Share information about your daily
plans, let them know where you will be. IF they may affect him be sure to tell
him about it. That could mean you will be late getting home and won’t have
dinner at the normal time, or it could mean you are having a business meeting
alone with another man. He needs to know these things because it builds more
trust, and he will know where to find you in case of emergency or if he just
wanted to say hi.
4. Future Honesty- Share your thoughts on the future, your
plans and goals. Dr. Willard Harley says “Never do anything without an
enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse”
Complete Honesty is
not keeping information from your spouse on purpose about anything! This is
more than just answering a question honestly when asked but freely giving the
information on your own.
Dr. Willard Harley is a clinical psychologist and
marriage counselor who wrote His Needs,
Her Needs and has wrote The Policy of Radical Honesty that can be found
here (http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3900_honesty.html). The four parts come from this policy the explanation
though is my own opinion.
Dependable
Being dependable when I think of it means doing what you
said you would, when you said you’d do it.
As a wife why should we be dependable, well for one thing the Bible
tells us to. That is good enough for me.
In Proverbs 31:11 says “That the heart of her husband safely trusts her;
she will have no lack of gain” showing that a wife can be trusted with her
husband’s income and will not spend it recklessly but use it in a way that is
beneficial to them both.
Your husband should know that beyond a doubt he can trust
you with anything, this relates to being honest. Dishonesty breeds mistrust. If
your honest with him and he knows that when you say you will do something that
you mean it, then you will have few issues with trust.
Ways to show you are dependable.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep. One of the worst things
is when someone tells you they will do something or they will be there and then
don’t do it.
Be on time. Show that you respect their time by being
punctual.
Listen and follow through. Even if you didn’t have an
agreement that you would do something, if there is a conversation about finding
things to do for vacation then go ahead and do it yourself and then share with
your spouse.
I hope you have liked this series. I know it has made me
reevaluate some of my actions. These have been somewhat difficult for me to
write, not because I can’t find words but because it is hard to explain why
exactly you need these traits. In being a decent human being you already are
compassionate, generous, patient, considerate, honest and dependable. You first
have to be a good person before you can be a good wife. The difference here
though is that you are this person to your husband; who you spend the most time
with, who can be annoying, who doesn’t pick up his clothes, who forgets to go
to the store, who sees you at your worst. He is the person you come home to
after a hard day where really the last thing you want to do is be on your best
behavior and think about being nice when you find the dishes still not done. BUT you do it anyway your kind, you
remember to have patience, you think about his hard day too, you think of his
needs before your own in those moments. That is what makes a good wife! Take
these traits that you already have in you and intentionally use them in your
marriage.
I have been asked a couple times about character traits for
men, while in general I do not write for a husband audience I do believe that
men should have many of these traits and a few different ones. I have decided
that I will write in the coming weeks about what character traits a husband
needs just without the tips on how to do it, because since I am not a man and I
have little insight as to how they may go about it.
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