We’ve made it to the last part of our series, Are You Ready for Marriage. The last piece of the puzzle, the fourth leg in a sturdy table, is gratitude.

Something as simple as “thank you” can share the integrity spotlight on the marital stage along with the stars of the show, love, honesty, and forgiveness. Let’s see how gratitude can bring strength to the ultimate relationship, marriage.

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation. Let me introduce Sara:

“Why is it, Bob, that there’s nothing I do that you appreciate, and yet all of a sudden, when we’re in the bedroom, you can’t have enough of me? Why’s that? Huh, Bob?”

Of all responses to Bob’s complaint that there’s not enough sex in their marriage, this was Sara’s. The tears and the anger of accumulated resentment gathered in response to Bob’s arrogant sense of entitlement. At one time in their marriage, Sara had cared. This care she’d held for the first five years of their marriage has partially a hope that her efforts would be acknowledged by him, that Bob would feel grateful for her support of him. The sacrifices she would make on his behalf, the moves his career demanded, the dinners, the golf, the late nights . . . the support from her that Bob could come to rely on had become no more than a litany of expectations he had come to assume. The clean home, the clean, folded laundry, the endless errands, all of the attempts she make to avoid being the target of his anger and frustrations.

And why does he think this marriage isn’t working?

“Well, I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s hormones or what. I can’t tell you the last time we had sex, let alone when Sara initiated anything.”

Today’s counseling won’t be about sex. It won’t be about providing Sara with some tips on “setting the mood” or about testing her hormone levels. Nope, not today, anyway. Instead, we’ll be talking about gratitude, appreciating all that we are given and all the many ways we are lovingly supported by the one who wants the most to be influential in positive ways.

Bitterness, cynicism, superficiality, anger, resentment, and depression are typical symptoms of diminished levels of gratitude. Their focus is hyper-vigilant on what they should have, should be entitled to, or should be given that they is not already theirs. After all that they give or do or sacrifice, after all the efforts they have made, the care and support and hardships endured, and nothing in return. They’re bitter, damned bitter. He’s resentful that she’s withholding sex and she’s hurt and angry that he’s denying her the support and understanding she needs to feel attracted to him in the first place.

Gone is the expression of any appreciation of the one another. Resentment occupies the space that gratitude would otherwise fill.

We have one of two places we can choose to love our lives from. Gratitude is the place we have chosen to feel for all that we have now, all that others give, all that we are blessed to be, blessed to call ours. This is a place of wholeness and fulfillment. Then, there is this other place that we can live our marriage from. This is the place of what we could have, should have, of what we are entitled to but haven’t been given, of what we’ll be when we’re loved, when we’re valued and appreciated and vindicated. Then we’ll be loving. Then we’ll be free to be what we cannot be until…

“Of course I’d love to love you…forgive you, appreciate you, value and affirm you. Of course. But how can I when you haven’t loved me, valued me, respected me?”

There is a space that will never be filled unless we consciously, deliberately fill that space with gratitude. Grateful, openly and sincere for all that we are blessed to have. None of which we are entitled to. All to be held as gifts. Our spouse’s care and love and all that they do, not because they have to, not because they should, we are grateful for the loving, caring, protective, selfless choices they make in their regard of us, their love of us.

Look around you. The couples that are happiest and the couples who are closest share one common factor- gratitude. Gratitude provides the sincerity of joy to love.

So, there it is. If you are, even remotely, considering the life-fulfilling covenant of marriage, and perhaps, one day, family, these are the five traits required for the very best marriage each of you can proudly call yours.

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