One of the many observations I’ve made is that over time, I develop ‘brand loyalty’. There are some products that have impressed me so much that I stick with that brand.
I now have loyalty to their products. One area where this shows up is in my favorite notebooks. In the past I used legal pads. They were handy and useful. Over time, I tried moleskine notebooks and have become a fan.
I find myself using notebooks for conferences, travel, personal reflection and finding insights. I now have several colors and sizes of them on my desk at all times. Each has its own special purpose.
One of the questions I wrote down as an insight concerned love and hate. It was “Do you love your spouse enough to hate?”
On first glance it may strike you as odd, yet when to think through the idea, it starts sinking in. When you love your spouse, you also develop a hatred of things that threaten your relationship with them.
In some ways, that hate is protective. Although hate is not a quality encouraged in mainstream culture, it’s important and valuable.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, it’s good to be a hater. Even though hate is not talked about or openly encouraged, it’s still there.
The messages of love contain a hidden between the lines message of hate as well. In popular culture, you’re to love everyone, except those whose opinions and views are deemed ‘offensive’.
Mainstream culture has this wrong. Instead of hating the offensive items, it should be hating what threatens your marriage.
Offensive things are the items you disagree with. Those items that are threatening to your marriage put your relationship in danger.
When it comes to your marriage, you need the ability to hate as well as the ability to love. It’s only when you have the hate, that you see the dangers and instinctively react to them.
You learn to hate the threats to your marriage whether it be an affair or a life-changing illness. You learn the importance of hating bad influences.
All it takes is one or two bad friends, and your spouse starts making bad choices. If you’ve never considered who or what you need to be hating in order to have a healthy marriage, you need to.
When you hate something, you react to the danger faster. You also have the passion needed in combating the threat.
If you’re so ‘nice‘ you wouldn’t ever consider hating anyone or anything, there’s a good chance your marriage isn’t as good as it could be.
In the video “We Need to Talk: Hurting People and Healing Questions”, I show you ways of opening up your communication, so that topics like hate can finally be talked about.
When it comes to warding off affairs, you can either chase off all the threats or strengthen your marriage. Making your marriage stronger by improving the communication always pays dividends.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
