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The following comes from Aleah Ingram at LDS Daily. To read the full article, click here.
Marriage may be ordained of God, but that doesn’t make it easy. While couples strive to experience a bit of celestial glory in this life, it is abundantly clear that marriage is often messy and hard. One of the best ways to get through the messy and hard together is to have a vulnerable marriage.
What is vulnerability? When you are vulnerable, you are exposed and honest. You take the risk of being hurt. Vulnerability is essential to building relationships that last forever.
Here are ten ways you can create greater emotional vulnerability in your marriage.
Remember You Are Worthy
Vulnerability can only be achieved when you learn to destroy the shame inside of you. Shame tells you that you are not worthy of love or goodness. According to shame, you are inherently bad. You don’t deserve a good life. You don’t deserve to be loved. You don’t deserve a good marriage or a good marriage partner.
Remember you are worthy! No matter what you’ve done or how imperfect you may feel, you deserve love. We all need to do our best to become like Christ, but striving to earn our worth will only lead us into the adversary’s traps.
Remember Your Spouse (and Marriage) Is Worthy
Just as you are worthy of love, so is your spouse. Your spouse is imperfect, but they deserve mercy from you. Your marriage is also worthy of hard work. Vulnerability means recognizing all of the faults in your spouse and marriage, yet choosing to find the joy and love anyways. You can see your spouse for who they are and make the choice to love them every single day.
Recognize What Makes You Uncomfortable
If you feel uncomfortable about something, it is a good sign you may need to be more vulnerable in that area. You make need to talk more frankly and openly about your concerns, your desires, or your own self-esteem issues.
Vulnerability can be good when it protects us from dangerous situations. We do not want to open up before we are ready or cast out our pearls before swine. However, you can take small steps towards vulnerability by knowing what limits you need to expand and what risks to take.
To read the full article on LDS Daily, click here.
