4 Rules That Can Save Your Marriage: Rule 3

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You are reading the third installment in a series of four articles
about rules of marriage. Each rule is designed to move a couple toward
better relating and more harmony. If you have missed any in the
series, you can find them at my blog (savethemarriage website).
Rule 3: Be Kind and Loving
This is a rule that definitely needs some clarification. I don't mean
that you have to have warm, gushy feelings toward your spouse at all
times. That is not, unfortunately, possible. And I don't mean you
won't act in unkind ways toward your spouse. That will happen from
time-to-time.
At the same time, I have seen couples treat each other as if they were
worst of enemies. There was no sense of "you and me, in this
together." Instead, there was a strong sense of "you versus me." And
with that comes the undermining of the marriage. A marriage is the
decision by two people to come together and act as a unit, be a team,
become one.
Yet we often find ourselves responding to spouses in ways that we
would never dream about acting toward a friend. I almost named this
rule "be civil," because I have said that to so many couples. They
will sit in my office and be nice toward me, then rude and unkind
toward their spouse, and I would admonish them to "be civil."
Being civil would be level one. The next level is to actually be kind
and loving. Which raises the question "how can I be kind and act
loving when I am angry? How can I pretend feel love when I don't?"
That, in my mind, is a misunderstanding of what love is about. I use
the word "love" as an action verb. Love is something I do, not
something I feel. Actions are loving. This is, in fact, one of the
major constructs of all the major religions: act lovingly toward those
you don't like. In other words, our major religions are noting the
potential to act in loving ways toward even our enemies, much less
those we love.
I place the action of love in a marriage into two categories. The
first is kindness. That would be defined as acting in kind ways -- not
calling names, demeaning, insulting, or hurting. Instead, kindness
would call for being supportive, caring, concerned.
Loving actions add another layer by asking "what does my spouse need
from me in order to feel loved?" We all have a need for love, and by
meeting our spouse's needs, we secure the relationship.
The Golden Rule is "do unto others as you would have them do unto
you." The Golden Rule of Love takes that one step further: "love
others as they need to be loved." What makes me feel loved does not
make you feel loved, and vice versa. So we strive to act in loving
ways, but in loving ways that make sense to the other person.
Unfortunately, our tendency, when we don't feel loved, is to refuse to
act lovingly. This creates a vicious cycle, and in the end, both feel
unloved. Which leads to either acting on automatic or choosing our
relationship destiny. On automatic, we run the vicious cycle.
But we can choose to act counter to that. We can choose to act
lovingly, even if we do not feel loved at that moment. We choose to
act in loving ways because the emotion is absent.
Here is the irony: when we do loving actions, we feel loving emotions.
When we wait for the emotions to act lovingly, we get stalled. But by
acting lovingly, we begin to nurture our own emotional state. Think
back on how you fell in love. Sure, there was likely an initial
attraction. But the love came because you did loving actions toward
each other. Likely, you chose bigger and bigger actions to express
your growing emotions. The emotion of love, put simply, is nurtured by
the action of loving. The reverse is not true.
Thus, rule #3 is "be kind and act lovingly." This puts us back into
the driver's seat of our relationship's destiny. We take control back
from our emotional state, and make a choice on the direction to take.