31 Days to a Happy Marriage: Day 4: Keep Your Mouth Shut

I'm very thankful for the people God has placed in my life to share their wisdom on marriage before I was even dating.  One of the best pieces of wisdom Jeremiah and I have ever received and actually listened to (ha!) was to keep our marriage problems to ourselves.

Don't run to your momma and throw up all of the horrible things your husband has done.  Husbands, don't run to your momma and slam your wife.  Do you know why?  You will forgive your spouse (hopefully, ha!).  Your momma, on the other hand, will not so easily forgive.  Seriously, you can't blame her.  If someone ever does anything wrong to my baby girl I just might have to kill him. ;)  Dealing with issues in a marriage is hard enough, but having negative feelings from others towards your spouse only makes it harder.

This piece of wisdom goes a lot further, too.  It's not wise to tell all of your marriage business to your friends, family, and especially facebook.  Oh please, oh please, don't post your negative thoughts about your spouse or what they did wrong on facebook.  I promise, no one on there wants to see it unless they are in the same boat themselves.  The thing is...YOU picked your spouse.  If you're having horrible issues and blurting them out to everyone, YOU look like the fool.

When Jeremiah and I went through our first 6 months of "hell", we agreed to keep it between us.  As hard as that was, thank God we did.  We didn't give other people room to plant seeds of negativity or division in our relationship.  Whenever it came to the point of having to talk to someone we chose people who we looked up to; people who could give us godly counsel; people who wouldn't pick sides; people who wouldn't gossip.

If you're spilling your guts to people that you shouldn't be just agree to stop.  Apologize to your spouse and to the ones you've spoken with.

Proverbs 10:19 (NLT) Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut.

Start fresh!  When you're not giving out negativity about your spouse or being fed negativity about your spouse, you're making room for happiness to come in.

*Find a list with links to the other posts in this series here.*