Where is Pride in our Relationsips

How is pride detrimental to relationships, especially in marriage? This is a question I want to explore today. In the following quote, “Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted in ourselves .....we discover that it is a hard thing to recognize pride in our own hearts. Perhaps it is the nature of man to strain to see the mote in our brother’s eye while struggling to squinting past the beam in our own eye. (see Matt. 7:3-5). Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride (Benson) and we can see how pride affects relationships because it is based on selfishness and it is all about me and not all about us. What does pride look like in marriage? Here are some things to think about and evaluate in our own relationships: (Goddard)

• Thinking your partner needs to be fixed because they are flawed in some way
• Focusing on our own needs and making our needs the priority in our marriage
• When we are “feeling irked, annoyed, or irritated with our spouse” (p. 69)
• Thinking everyone else needs to change
• When you view marriage as only being a relationship that should bring pleasure, insight, satisfaction, and fulfillment to yourself
• When we have our own vision of truth and imagine that no one else can see this truth as clearly as we can
• When we feel we know our partners better than they know themselves
• When we are always innocent, and they are always guilty
• When we analyze and study past experiences looking for ways we were violated
• When “we continue to grieve over our injuries and rehearse our opponents' offences” (p. 74)
• Feeling there is no way to fix your marriage
• Going through “cycles of correction and paybacks” p. (78)
• Allowing concerns and irritations to turn into judgments
• When we leave no allowances for our partner
• When we have “narrow, trivial, superficial demands” that our partner should look, act and be what media says they should be (p. 82)

So, what do we do to rid pride from our relationships? President Benson has reminded us that “God will have a humble people. Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled to be humble.” (Benson)

He goes on to say, “Let us choose to be humble.” He gives us nine ways we can be humble:

1. We can choose to humble ourselves by conquering enmity toward our brothers and sisters, esteeming them as ourselves, and lifting them as high or higher than we are.
2. We can choose to humble ourselves by receiving counsel and chastisement.
3. We can choose to humble ourselves by forgiving those who have offended us.
4. We can choose to humble ourselves by rendering selfless service.
5. We can choose to humble ourselves by going on missions and preaching the word that can humble others.
6. We can choose to humble ourselves by getting to the temple more frequently.
7. We can choose to humble ourselves by confessing and forsaking our sins and being born of God.
8. We can choose to humble ourselves by loving God, submitting our will to His, and putting Him first in our lives.
9. We must yield “to the enticing’s of the Holy Spirit,” put off the prideful “natural man,” become “a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord,” and become “as a child, submissive, meek, humble.”

By doing these things we can see our own flaws and start working on our own problems and leave our partners problems alone. When we work on fixing ourselves, we become humbler, more able to see our partners for who they really are, the person we fell in love with. Humility helps us love deeper, give more and expect less. We become grateful for our spouse and appreciate all they are and how they love us back. It gives us the ability to love deeper and to find more fulfillment in our relationships. It helps us realize the changes we need to make in ourselves and allows us to move forward in a happier way. I hope we can all focus on being humble, forgiving, more loving and grateful for our partners.

References

Benson, Ezra T. Beware Of Pride. Ensign, May 1989.

Goddard, H. W. Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage. (2009). Cedar Hills, UT: Joymap Publishing.

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