Whether a woman has an arranged marriage
or she finds her husband on her own,
she must learn to accept her husband as he is
and learn to live with him.
The second of the Sacred Secrets of the Sadhvis is to let our husband be who he is and to refrain from trying to change him.
Years ago, I asked my dear friend Helen Andelin (Fascinating Womanhood author) if I could quote from her book in my own book about marriage that I was writing for devotees of Krsna. She told me that it might be challenging to try to get permission from the publishers, so she suggested that I just go ahead and say something like, "Helen Andelin says in her book Fascinating Womanhood that such-and-such." She recommended that I not quote her verbatim. So in her honor, I am "quoting" from her book without really quoting her exactly, and I am doing this on my blog instead of in a book.
Mrs. Andelin emphasized the importance of recognizing that our husband is who he is, and if we try to make him into someone he's not, he will feel offended and resent our efforts to force him into a mold that doesn't fit him. And it won't work.
Let him have his space to be himself. Guys need that. Let him work on his own faults in his own time in his own way. Don't needle or pressure him. Don't criticize him or try to fix him. He already knows he has faults. He doesn't need you to inform him about his faults or to offer him suggestions how to improve.
Allow him to have his own personality. Learn about the different kinds of personalities among people, and learn how to accommodate your husband's personality type. Learn about your own personality type, too. This will help you understand how to combine his personality type with your own to make them mesh and harmonize better.
One tool that has really helped me a lot in this area is the Enneagram Personality Typing System. I learned about it from a book called The Wisdom of the Enneagram. Also, the website 9types.com has helped me and my husband immeasurably. This information has helped me to understand my husband and myself better, so that I can more quickly and easily analyze a touchy situation for what it is: a temporary clash of two different personality types with different expectations and different paradigms of how things should be. Add to this different methods of communication, and you have a perfect formula for a misunderstanding! Because my husband and I are not yet free from being influenced by the material modes, we tend to grate on each other at times. When you understand yourself and your husband better, you can laugh about his and your idiosyncrasies and shrug them off like water off a duck's back. Quirks that used to bother you about your spouse become easier to tolerate when you know they are a common aspect of a certain personality type. And quirks of your own that used to embarrass you become just another of the temporary aspects of your own personality type that you can overcome in time.
Besides the Enneagram system, there is also the Myers-Briggs personality typing system. I find this helpful also in understanding my husband, myself, and how we relate to each other. A very helpful website for understanding MB types is here.
Two tests you can take to help you discover your type in the Enneagram system are:
http://www.eclecticenergies.
http://www.enneagram.net/
Here are a couple of tests that can help you determine your Myers-Briggs type:
Socionics
and
http://www.socionics.com/sta/sta_turbo_xl.html?E5S37F36j29
Let go and let God
Be patient with your husband and know that he is sincerely trying his best. Don't measure him by your own standards. Know that Krsna knows him best and understands him better than you do, that Krsna is measuring him by His own standards, and that Krsna has everything under control. Leave your husband in Krsna's hands. Krsna is training your husband in His own perfect time and with His own perfect methods how to become completely pure of all his anarthas.
Focus on your own faults. Work on purifying your own heart. Get rid of your own anarthas. Come to the level of being beyond reproach yourself before you criticize others. And leave your husband's improvement up to Krsna, the Supreme Reformer. Leave him lovingly in Krsna's hands.
There's an old saying, "Let go and let God." When you let go and allow God to take over your husband's business of improving himself, you enjoy the rewards of a happy husband and a more peaceful home life. By letting your husband be who he is and giving him the freedom to improve himself on his own, you allow yourself the freedom to appreciate him for who he is. When she lets go of the reins of trying to control her husband, the rider is free to climb down off her high horse, step back, and see him through different eyes, the eyes of acceptance and appreciation. Our men can tell when we are critical of them, even if we don't say anything. They can see it in our faces. They can feel it in our moods. They can also sense when we let go and decide to let Krsna take over, when we recognize that it is not our business to improve our husband and make him fit into a mold that we have created for him in our mind. Krsna makes wonderful things happen in a marriage when the wife stops trying to change her husband and lets him be who he is and improve himself at his own pace. When she stops trying to change him and leaves his improvement up to Krsna, Krsna is so pleased with such a trusting, accepting wife that He rewards her with blessings beyond her expectations.
Look on the (b)right side
One very good strategy for helping us learn to let our husband be himself is to overlook his negative qualities and focus on his good qualities. Learn the art of overlooking your husband's negative qualities or behaviors that disturb you. This is done while simultaneously paying attention to his characteristics and attributes and accomplishments that impress you and make you feel proud of him. Here's an exercise you can try in order to help you learn how to overcome the tendency to criticize and change your husband:
Fold a sheet of paper in half vertically. On the right side, just to the right of the crease, write the numbers 1 through 10. On the left side, at the left edge of the paper, write the numbers 1 through 10.
A. On the right side, list ten things you respect, admire, or appreciate about your husband.
B. On the left side, list ten things that bother, irritate or annoy you about your husband.
Now, fold the paper along the crease, placing the left side in back so that you see only the positive qualities. Stand the piece of paper on your home altar or in front of a picture of Krsna with your husband's positive traits facing outward toward you and his negative traits facing Krsna. Ask Krsna to please accept your husband's negative qualities and take care of cleaning them out of your husband's heart. The negative qualities are now on the back side of the folded sheet of paper so you can't see them, but you know that Krsna can see them. Ask Krsna to help you trust that He will take care of correcting your husband's bad qualities and behavior. If you like, you can turn your prayer into a positive affirmation by stating that you see that Krsna has kindly taken care of helping your husband see his negative qualities and misbehaviors. Then, you can conclude by thanking Krsna ahead of time for cleaning these negative qualities out of your husband's heart. Now, tuck that piece of paper in a secret place where only you and Krsna know where it is. By overlooking your husband's faults and leaving them in Krsna's care, you are not denying that his faults exist. No. This is not denial. You're fully (and sometimes painfully) aware that they exist. You are just leaving them in Krsna's hands while focusing instead on your husband's good qualities. Do this exercise periodically.
On another sheet of paper...
C. Write down ten of your own faults.
D. List ten of your positive traits or achievements.
E. Write down ten (or more) things you are grateful for in your life.
And lastly...
F. Pray that you and your husband can both appreciate each other the way you are, and that you will both be blessed with pure devotion in this very lifetime.
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