Dr. Gottman had some great insights to our dreams and how gridlock situations are a result of those not being met. It reminded me of something that Dr. John Lund said in a talk, he is a dreamer and his wife is very practical. He loves to talk and dream about a cabin in the mountains and at the beginning of their marriage she was afraid he would impulse buy a cabin they couldn’t afford. What it came down to was he enjoyed talking about his dream and he encouraged everyone to not kill their spouse’s dreams. This has always stuck with me and I can see another level of its importance from what Dr. Gottman said.

There is so much of our identity in our dreams and hopes and to have it unceremoniously discarded or discredited feels like an attack on who we are. In all of the scenarios that Dr. Gottman presented I could see how the one side was putting who they were out there. One of the scariest things about marriage to me was having one person have such intimate knowledge of me the good and the bad. There is a lot of opportunity for a spouse to rack their partner over the coals for the failings because of that intimate knowledge. Dr. Goddard said:

            “If I am unhappy with Nancy it is because I do not understand or do not honor the covenants I have made. I do not have charity.”

The las part of not having charity was so impactful on me. I have such a hard time with being charitable with myself and those I come in contact with and through the years I have curbed what I say out loud but the inner dialogue is horrible. I fall into the trap of thinking that my perception is reality and therefore that person is bad because of XY and Z. I realized through the readings it is because I am feeding the natural man inclination and turning away from Christ and seeing others as he sees them.

It is interesting because I don’t see my husband uncharitably but some of his family members I really struggle with. In fact one of our gridlocks is over his family members and it is because of my behavior and unwillingness currently to look beyond my perceptions. My husband is so loving and charitable to everyone, and from my perspective it comes as naturally as breathing to him, and it makes me take a defensive stance that I need to ‘protect’ him from being used and abused by those that I think are not deserving of such charity. This week I have learned a lot about the things that I need to work on and like C.S. Lewis said I have some rats in my cellar that I need to work on.