by Jim Ruth

Created on: April 07, 2009

I hesitated for a long time before undertaking to write about changing a spouse's behavior. I have no training in the field. The only expertise I can call on is personal experience, and not a lot of that. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought I really need to share my experience.

To address the whole of my experience on the subject, I really need to start at the beginning quite some time before I felt the need to change my wife's behavior.

My wife and I met on a blind date. How I came to call a woman I'd never met, never seen, never seen a photograph of, and never even heard a physical description of, and ask her out on a date is a whole separate story, but that is the essence of how we met. As strange and amazing as that first date was, it pales in comparison to the fact that we were married 33 days later. And it may be considered strange to many that we are still married almost 30 years later.

I would not recommend that sort of hasty path to marriage to anyone. We loved each other then, and we love each other more now, but in between were a number of really turbulent years. Let's face it if you marry just a month after you first meet, you're marrying a stranger. It is much easier to work out differences and find common ground or work out compromises when you have the ability to go to neutral corners periodically. That's harder to do when you're already married.

I remember going through a period of time (a very long period of time) when it seemed that almost all of my prayers were about my wife and our relationship. I really don't remember specific prayers, but I can certainly remember the overall message from me to God. It was pretty much "God, I really need for you to make this woman listen to reason. If you can just open her ears, and her heart, to hear how very RIGHT I am in the things I'm trying to explain to her, I know everything will work out okay."

This is probably as good a time as any to mention something I realized quite a while later. The most important factor in a couple's ability to weather tough times is having at any given moment at least one of the two absolutely committed to the belief that marriage is for life. Committed to the idea that you will only be parted by death. It's probably a good thing, too, if the commitment to "'til death doth us part" doesn't include the thought that "maybe I can arrange that myself." I've thought about that a lot. Like I said, they were VERY turbulent years.

I don't remember any feeling that God

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