Proper management of monkeys.

The Harvard Business Review once published a famous article titled:
Management time: Who’s Got The Monkey?

Monkeys represent our individual responsibilities. The things we carry on our back.
Our responsibilities, the ones we need to take care of. It is important we never shift our monkey to someone else’s back. It is equally important we don’t carry someone else’s monkey for them.

Now switch from business to marriage …. The monkey is now our responsibility to love our spouse.

The monkey we carry in our marriage is, our responsibility to keep the love for our spouse alive and well. Nurturing and sustaining our love in a marriage falls upon each of us.

This has some crossover to what Harley is teaching us with Marriage Builders. Teaching us how to manage our monkey. Owning our monkey. Not pushing our monkey onto our spouse. “Here, make sure you are loveable so I can love you.”

How can I stay in love with my spouse, my imperfect irritating annoying spouse.
(and, visa versa)

The burden for nurturing my love for my spouse is my monkey. It is not my spouse’s monkey. Our culture teaches us otherwise. Our culture encourages us to place the burden of nourishing our love on the person we are trying to love. When I shift my love monkey to my spouse, I risk losing my love for my spouse. My love can evaporate as soon as he does something irritating or annoying.

How to nourish and sustain love over time when our human instincts want us to give up or lash out?

By owning our monkey
Nourishing our spirit
Developing a mature faith
Choosing loving actions

God’s Grace

Hello Pepperband
Your post comes just in time for me. I really like what you wrote and appreciate that you took the time to post this. It is making a lot of sense for me right now. I don't know if you read my post just below yours, called "what is love?". WOW, I needed this right now.
Thank you. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />