Whose Happiness Will It Be?

The Unbelieving Relationship – Part 2

What would happen if you loved those you’re in relationship with unlike anyone else has ever loved them before? To do this you need plan. Even in a relationship, you need to have a plan. If you only knew my story, you’d understand why I made this promise to Pamela–to treat her unlike anyone on the planet could or ever would. If you, like I, want to overcome your story, then you need a plan for (even) your relationships.

Many times as the relationship progresses, some of the actions you took to secure the relationship fade-they begin to become commonplace. At the start of it, there was no difficulty in taking interest in the person you were connecting. In fact, it wasn’t until you committed to the relationship that the interest in each other began to fade. What happened? “Common” happened. “Common” is the person who doesn’t plan for this natural occurrence.

“Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” ~ The Apostle Paul

Because this fading of interest happens naturally, you must learn how to be un-natural (uncommon). If but for no other reason, this was mentioned in scripture. “Honor one another above yourselves.” It’s not something that’s automatic and it implies that not honoring one another occurs by default. It’s what happens in the normal course of time. This is one of those things you just need to know. That would mean an uncommon practice is placing our interest in our spouse first.

Your Happiness Or Your Spouses
Ask yourself this question, which is a higher priority: your happiness or your spouse’s happiness? If you’re normal, you won’t say it but the truth is “yours”. You consider your happiness first. Here’s a response I’ve heard dozens of times, “I’ve done all… and they are not showing the same in return. I’m just being a fool.” The only truth in that statement is “I’m just being a fool.” You’re being fooled. If there is a battle for happiness in your relationship, that’s normal. I have a Godly-anger towards what’s normal. Simply put, happiness is not a byproduct of a good significant other. How does your spouse go from making you the happiest person on earth to making you the most unhappy? Normal thinking would have you believe that they somehow drastically changed. The truth is they didn’t change that much, you decided to be unhappy with what once made you happy, so you thought.

Stop Putting Your Best Foot Forward for Him/Her
Normal people stop putting their best efforts into the relationship and thusly cause it to already be dead and over. What in the world makes us stop working for our significant others? Common people don’t realize that when judged, it’s only their actions that will count, not what their significant other has done. Common people don’t realize that God’s law of love will work every time. Whatever we sow, we reap. What we experience today is a result of what we planted yesterday. If we stop working for our spouse, we’re asking (or setting ourselves up) for our spouse to stop working for us.

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Turning It Around
To combat “common”-what happens naturally, you need to use some uncommon practices. To have the relationship no one else has is to be uncommon. This is what it looks like when a spouse takes the no-longer-common route…

They commit to the happiness and well-being of their spouse as their highest priority. Can you imagine how your spouse would respond if you committed to their happiness and well-being above your own?
Act on the uncommon principles found in scripture and show love to them. The uncommon understand that normal laws can’t produce the results they desire so the answer (obviously) is to use some uncommon ones.
Evaluate the results you’re having and plan for the adjustments you need to make. This is call testing. You implement and give it a try. When the results aren’t what you expected you try a different approach.
Repeat the steps. Just like any system you put in place, you will need to tweak it over time. Repeat the steps and continue to make the improvements needed to have the best relationships you possibly can.

If you take these actions, you’ll have a relationship that’s unlike any you’ve ever heard of. What would happen if you took this approach to better your most important relationship? Leave a comment below.

In our next post, we will start discussing the relationship definition most will never know. If while reading this post, you thought of someone, anyone, who could benefit from it, forward it to them. Complete the form below to send us your thoughts and comments.