What do you do about those little problems in your marriage? Do you focus on the seeds or do you focus on the watermelon?
What might the ‘seeds’ be in your marriage?
- Unresolved tensions
Glossed over hurts
Things you haven’t talked about because they don’t see that important
Surface conversations that don’t get to feelings
Shallow comments that don’t take feelings into consideration
Little things that get under your skin because you can’t let them go
Nitpicky comments that can drive a man to drink
Refusing to love the person the way they like to be loved
Selfish behaviors
The Watermelon is the bigger picture.
Fact. Most watermelons have seeds — unless you buy those weird watermelons that aren’t really watermelons because they have been mutated to grow without seeds.
We have to spit them out or we choke. If we swallow them we will have a watermelon tree growing in our stomach. (Ok, I know they grow on vines.)
Look. Sometimes the seeds get in the way of the watermelon. The seeds start to grow in our minds. They block out good thinking. The seeds become our obsession. They are easy to spit out…but what do we do? We suck on em. We keep thinking about them. We let them plant in our brain until we have watermelons growing out of our ears.
Spit out the seeds. Or at least acknowledge they are there, talk about them, and let them go.
Don’t make the seed the watermelon.
Deal with the seed so you can enjoy the sweet goodness of the watermelon.
(thanks to Steve Sjogren for this thought)
TALK TO ME: What do you do about little things in your marriage – Deal with them or sweep them under the carpet? Leave a comment or shoot me an email!
photo by Daniel Fardin
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Can always count on you for a good analogy!
I think most seeds are worth addressing, but there are also some that are OK to ignore (like those little white ones!)
My husband and I can talk/discuss the problems ad nausea um, but we rarely come to any resolution. For example, it is stressful and hurtful that his children refuse to talk to me when they spend their week with us. When I approach my husband, his response is always “I can't make them talk to you”. I find it very hard to spend a week with people who treat me like furniture. He would never allow them to treat his family or their teachers/coaches in that manner and yet, he says nothing to them about treating me poorly. We have discussed and discussed, but when one is willing to do nothing what's the other person to do? HELP!
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