6
2
Seven deadly sins that will kill harmony in the home and may derail a marriage…
(Originally shared on LinkedIn in my monthly Word Warrior newsletter.)
I have been married (to the same person) for over 40 years. Still, I do not speak from authority as much as observation. I have broken enough rules, made sufficient blunders, and created the right dose of havoc to shipwreck any marriage. I have bellied out in enough bar ditches to appreciate the value of “keeping it between the lines.”
I have hummed along to the blessings of harmony at home and, conversely, my ears have tinged with the screech of dissonance. I have learned that even the Garden of Eden, the place of tranquility and belonging, can produce poisonous fruit if ill-attended. The serpent still slithers and seduces us with sins of commission and omission. Some, like infidelity, are massive and alarming. Others are more subtle, sometimes hardly noticeable, but just as deadly.
I present you with the 7 deadly sins that disrupt harmony in the home.
Laziness
Relationships are like gardens: they require constant tending. Leave them unattended and the weeds of apathy will choke the life out of them, or the locusts with their bad intentions and ravenous appetites will destroy them.
Marriage and parenting require diligence and vigilance. Too often, we want to treat everything else – job, education, outside relationships – with kid gloves but then relax and expect home life to take care of itself.
It won’t.
Leisure is one thing. Laziness is another. The lazy take shortcuts, ignore warning signs, and neglect important things (and people) to take the path of least resistance. Ultimately, laziness leaves no legitimate time or opportunity for leisure.
Leisure is a reward for good planning, hard work, and self-discipline. Laziness is a cheap knockoff of leisure. Healthy leisure is kicking up your feet without guilt because you didn’t leave anything urgent or important (like your partner or your kids) unattended.
Note: “It’s ok to say, ‘I just want to be lazy today,’ as long as you don’t mean by that, ‘I want to shirk pressing obligations and neglect the people I love most.'” I am speaking in this article specifically to laziness in relationships. Haul off and go fishing whenever you can, or armchair quarterback, or work that 1,000-piece puzzle, or wear out the buttons on your PS5. Just don’t be lazy in your relationships and expect them to just be ok because you think they should be.
Carelessness
Every marriage should have a “Handle with care” tag on it. Every child should come with those instructions.care·less·ness /ˈkerlÉ™snÉ™s/ noun failure to give sufficient attention to avoiding harm or errors; negligence. “most road accidents are caused by carelessness on the part of motorists”
On my last birthday, my son-in-law gifted me The WordFinder by J.I. Rodale, which is, as the author states in the Preface, emphatically not another Thesaurus. Instead, the book gives you adjectives and verbs often used with the word in question.
So, I looked up “carelessness.”
The following adjectives are suggested to accompany carelessness: criminal, habitual, elaborate, assumed, inveterate, idle, loveable, studied, superb, unpardonable, willful, culpable, deliberate.
Take each of those adjectives and put it with carelessness; e.g., “criminal carelessness,” or “willful carelessness.” The adjectives commonly associated with carelessness accentuate the gravity of the word.
Maybe you excuse yourself in your romantic relationship because being romantic is not your nature. It does not come easy to you. It is ok to be clumsy. It is not ok to be careless. Separate the syllables of “careless” and you get “care less.”
Never let anyone you love believe you “couldn’t care less.”
You may be awkward or unskilled. That is not the issue here. Carelessness is. There is no room for carelessness in any relationship you care about.
Unfaithfulness
Faithfulness is a big theme in the Bible, but what does it mean?
Spiros Zodhiates states that it means “good faith, faithfulness, sincerity”; being faithful, sincere”; and “all good fidelity” ( Complete Word Study Dictionary of the New Testament, p. 1162). The Hebrew word rendered “faithfulness” is emunah, which Strong’s says means “firmness,” figuratively means “security,” and morally means “fidelity.”
I don’t think we misunderstand what faithfulness means. I think we underestimate its importance. We get so wrapped up in “what’s best for me” that we sell our souls to the highest bidder, believing that is best when more often than not, it is the opposite.
I went back to my Word Finder book and, this time, I looked at the verbs suggested to go with the word. Again…wow.
“believe in faithfulness.“
“Build faithfulness.”
“Cherish faithfulness.”
“Demand…display…encourage…necessitate…praise…prove…”
You don’t need anyone to explain faithfulness to you, or to defend it. You just have to decide whether to commit to it. Faithful and true – what better description of a friend, lover, husband, wife, father, or mother can you find?
Inconsistency
Consistency, thou art a jewel! ~often attributed to Shakespeare but no hard evidence he originated it.
Shakespeare?
I had a friend tell me after her husband passed, “You don’t realize how much you count on a person you can count on until you can’t count on them anymore.”
I thought it was brilliantly stated.
My wife is a baker. She talks a good deal about “consistency” in baking.
“Baking is science. Cooking is an art. When baking, you have to be precise,” she says.
She also talks about consistency in terms of texture and such: “Beat an egg too much, it can whip too much air into the batter.”
She just ran into this problem on Easter when she had a cake “fall,” or sink into itself.
Consistency is important in relationships, too. Establish yourself as someone others can count on – in good ways.
Some are consistent in all the wrong ways.
“Dad’s going to blow his top!”
“Mom’s going to lose it.”
Consistency in a good waylooks more like this:
“Call Dad. He’ll come and get us.”
“Tell Mom. She will know what to do.”
I love that “consistency” is built on the word, “consist.”
Consistency is made up of what makes you up. You are consistent in what you consist of. Consistency is what you are made of.
Consistency is made up of what makes you up.
JourneyMan
Inconsistency in a partner or parent is discouraging, disorienting, and even debilitating.
Selfishness
There is no place in love for selfishness. Love is selfless. Love is sacrifice. Love is giving. Imagine that each partner was selfless and committed to the other’s happiness and well-being, how would that impact the relationship?
Look here for signs you are being selfish in your relationship.
Unpredictability
Unpredictability is a first cousin to inconsistency. Inconsistency fosters unpredictability. Other words you might put alongside it are volatility, instability, loose cannon, impulsiveness…
- Volatility – unpredictable in temperament, apt to explode or go into a shell (may need to be evaluated for a disorder I am unequipped to suggest or remedy).
- Instability – Unable to take care of oneself or to provide a stable environment for others.
- Loose cannon – May go off at any time, particularly verbally, and say something inappropriate or damaging.
- Impulsive – Cannot be trusted in a shoe store or a grocery store. Makes snap decisions. Acts without deliberation, discussion, or consideration of consequences.
Complacency
When you are dating and dreaming of how it will be to be married, you seldom consider how life is.
Life is mostly made up of ordinary – ordinary things, ordinary events, ordinary days, etc. The only reason extraordinary even exists is that things are so doggone ordinary all the time!
The only reason extraordinary even exists is that things are so doggone ordinary all the time!
JourneyMan
I found this little nugget at betterhelp.com:
In relationships, complacency can be defined as the gradual decline of effort put into maintaining a healthy and connected relationship. As we become more comfortable with our partners, we may start taking them for granted or even begin to prioritize other aspects of our lives over them. This is often a reaction to the monotony of everyday life, where we may find ourselves in a routine that leads us to neglect important aspects of our relationship.
BetterHelp.com
The everyday enemy is not the exciting distractions that may lead us astray but the drab monotony of paying bills, changing diapers, buying groceries, paying more bills, going to work, driving home in traffic, trying to find something on TV, fretting over dinner, paying even more bills…
Commit to doing the ordinary with extraordinary faithfulness, consistency, selflessness, carefulness, and effort, and see if that doesn’t give you a lift, a spark, a little blush in the gray.
Most of the “deadly sins” that derail a marriage or disrupt a home are not big-ticket items. They are the slithery little things.
In the uber-romantic book, the Song of Solomon, which records conversations between lovers, the woman in the relationship writes,
Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming!
Song of Solomon 2:15
The little things make a marriage and a home go, and the little things unattended cause it to die on the vine.
Next week, Part Two of Home is Where the Hard is: The 7 Pillars of a Healthy Home