If marriage is a vocation, then training is a necessary aspect of that. Since spouses are the ministers of the sacrament to each other, it would make sense that at least a significant portion of the training for their particular marriage would be each spouse teaching the other. I think the particular form of training is more like peer mentors than like a parent-child dynamic, at least ideally it should be.
My husband has helped me to learn to do many things, or to do them better, and I have helped him. A large part of marriage includes accommodating or pleasing one’s spouse. So I don’t think that anything negative should be assumed about the idea of spouses training each other, unless disrespect is obviously being given.
While it is true that no one can teach someone about you quite the way you can, we have to also remember that the end of marriage is to make saints. In the monastery, your cell may teach you everything, but whether in marriage or in a religious community the way of the saints is for each one to put himself or herself aside well enough that an eternity with that person could someday be a thing of bliss!
*If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy,complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but everyone for those of others.
Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.*
(Phil 2:1-8)
Of course most of us have some thing that we have to have “just so” or else we think it is being done wrong, even if it is our insistence that there should not be a “just so” way of doing anything. The main thing is to ask for our eccentricities to be accommodated as a fault or as a weakness. Others who jump through hoops to please us ought to be given credit for indulging our vanity or our weakness. We shouldn’t congratulate ourselves for “improving” them because they have learned that we expect them to jump through hoops to please us. No, we ought to be grateful for that generosity.
Likewise, if we have to put our own way aside to satisfy someone else, that is no more than the work of becoming a saint. On a good day, we ought not resent it, but offer it to God as a way to get us out of ourselves.
On that account, I’d say it is better that we try to teach ourselves to want to prefer our spouse’s way of doing things over our own, provided we do not flatter ourselves and give more than we have the generosity to give. If you fancy yourself a martyr because you prefer yourself strongly in an inward way but don’t let on about it to others, you have your reward. No, you ought to be honest about what you have the generosity to give.
We also need to leave our pride behind and allow our spouses to cater to us, not acting as if we don’t need anything. If you give your spouse the pleasure of doing things for you that your spouse finds it a pleasure to do, that builds your relationship.
In the original article, neither spouse did that. One thought he should not have to change some little thing because it wasn’t important to him, while the other couldn’t bring herself to tolerate some little thing because her husband was too thick to see how it irritated her.
Well said! Two wrongs don’t make a right.