Whenever news stories come around dealing with relationships, I take notice. The latest relationship trend is that of some schools banning the practice of children having ‘best friends’.
The rationale is that best friend relationships are exclusive. These relationships are not inclusive enough for the social engineers. In their mind, they want children’s social circles to include everyone on an equal basis, with no preferences.
The topic is one sure to spark some lively conversations. Reading through the news on this topic, the question came into my mind about whether your marriage is “too inclusive?”
When your marriage is too inclusive, allowing more people in that is healthy, the relationship breaks down. Affairs are just one way that marriages include more people than is healthy.
Other threats include the job, the career, church or hobbies. Although each of these are necessary, when your marriage includes them too much, they become destructive.
Bear in mind, that even cancer starts off as good cells that go too far. When relationships go too far and your marriage becomes too inclusive, you lose the special bond of your relationship.
I’ve worked with pastors who brought people into their home with good intentions. under the guise of helping out some needy teen or woman, they end up inviting in the destruction of their own marriage.
Inclusivity threatens marriages. Although socially, it sounds ‘nice’, in practice, it damages your marriage. You can do a hell of a lot of damage wanting to include others or including others too much.
Let me call inclusivity what it is, ‘weak boundaries’. When you re-read the news stories about schools wanting more inclusivity and replace that work with weak boundaries, you suddenly see it in a new light.
Is your marriage exclusive? If so, congratulate yourself.
Is your marriage too inclusive? If so, you need help in many areas. That inclusivity damages communication, security, intimacy and trust. It sucks the life out of your special relationship.
If your marriage has been damaged by being too inclusive, you can benefit from the “Affair Recovery Workshop”. In it, you’ll find ways of re-establishing boundaries and making your marriage a safe place again.
Being too inclusive in your marriage brings relationship fatigue. Rather than your marriage building you up, it becomes something that drains you.
You may be so fatigued, you don’t even know where to begin and at the same time wonder “how did that happen?” You try being a good person and helping others yet wonder how your marriage fell apart. The answer could be that your marriage was too inclusive.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
