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Are You the CEO of Your Marriage?

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How would you respond to the following question… “Are you the CEO in your marriage?” Maybe you would say, “Well, no! of course not!” Maybe you say your spouse acts like the CEO. Or, maybe you would say, “What do you mean by that?”

DO MARRIAGES HAVE CEO’S?

Every company has a CEO, or Chief Executive Officer. This person is the highest-ranking person in the company and the one ultimately responsible for making managerial decisions.

By this definition, you might say, “Marriages don’t have CEO’s. They’re not a business or a corporation.” And you would be right.

But many marriages still have a CEO. I call them the Chief Ego Officer, and they function much in the same way as the CEO of a company. They carry a lot of weight in the relationship, especially when it comes to direction and decision-making.

DECIDING WHO’S THE CEO.

How can you tell if you’re the CEO in the marriage? Ask yourself the following questions…and try to be honest with yourself:

  • Do you tend to make most of the decisions?
  • Do you get upset when your spouse makes a decision without checking with you first?
  • Do you often explain to your spouse why your way is better?
  • Do you have trouble listening to and considering your spouse’s opinions and approaches?
  • Do you get frustrated or angry when your spouse doesn’t take your advice or do things as you want?
  • Do you look down on your spouse for thinking or believing as they do?
  • Do you see your spouse’s differences of opinion as a threat to you or the marriage?

You may believe this list better fits your spouse than it does you, but the more you answer “yes” to these questions, the more likely you are to be the Chief Ego Officer of the relationship. You may have become the CEO in response to their behavior, but it still will affect your marriage.

WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF A CEO ON A MARRIAGE?

Though a company benefits from a strong CEO, a marriage suffers from a strong CEO. When a marriage has a strong Chief Ego Officer, two things typically happen:

The marriage becomes oppressive.

Whether it’s implied or stated out-right, the CEO of the marriage has a my-way-or-the-highway approach to the relationship. The other spouse’s thoughts, opinions, or approaches are ignored, dismissed, and not considered. The CEO increasingly stifles their spouse, not allowing them to be themselves.

This is a poison that will slowly kill the love, affection, and attraction in the relationship. And, the longer this continues, the harder it becomes to recover the relationship.

Then, the second effect a Chief Ego Officer has on marriage is…

The marriage becomes abusive.

Many CEO marriages stay stuck in the oppressive stage. But there are some marriages that progress to the abusive stage.

When the Chief Ego Officer experiences disagreement or push back from their spouse, they will begin to push back themselves. At first, the CEO will try to convince or cajole their spouse into seeing things their way. If that doesn’t work, the CEO’s approach will become more pointed and frustrated. If that doesn’t work, their anger will come out and they will become emotionally abusive, and possibly physically abusive.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE IN A CEO RELATIONSHIP.

If you find yourself in a CEO marriage, what should you do? Well…

If You’re the CEO…

  • Humble yourself. Apologize to your spouse for being so dominant and inconsiderate. This is hard, especially for a CEO, but you need to start here. And your apology must be sincere, not just a way to get the heat off or to get your spouse to soften back up to you. If you’re not really repentant for your behavior, you’ve not changed and the relationship can’t change.
  • Invite and listen to your spouse’s opinions. This is not just something to check off the list so you can then get on to how you want to do things. Take your time and honestly listen to them. To paraphrase Stephen Covey, seek first to understand them before trying to get them to understand you. Hear their thoughts, their heart, and their desires.
  • Look for reasons to defer to your spouse. This is hard for a Chief Ego Officer because they usually believe their spouse should defer to them. But try hard to defer to your spouse whenever possible. You may feel your way is better, but don’t push your way through. Share it with your spouse and make sure you both agree your way is better before implementing it.
  • Make the above a way of life. If you just do these things to get back on your spouse’s good side, then you’ve not really changed. You’re just manipulating the situation to get back in their good graces. These changes need to be a way of life for you…even if the marriage fails.

If Your Spouse is the CEO…

If your spouse is the CEO, you have three options:

  • Continue on as it is. Some people decide they will just go on tolerating the CEO’s behavior. Perhaps they don’t want to rock the boat out of fear of the CEO’s response. Maybe they’re concerned for others in the family. Or maybe their own insecurities make them wonder if there’s something wrong with them. Continuing on as-is is a valid option, but know that such a marriage rarely improves over time.
  • Begin to push back against the CEO’s behavior. This could go from standing up for yourself and your opinions, to not being easily coerced, to insisting on counseling, to threatening to leave the relationship. Chances are, the CEO will not react favorably to such changes, and they will do whatever they can to get things back to “normal.” If they feel they’ve got no other option, the CEO will seem to concede, but it usually doesn’t last.
  • Leave the relationship. If all else fails, you may decide you can no longer tolerate the relationship and make plans to leave. Departure is a last resort option and can either be temporary, until the CEO truly changes, or permanent. The CEO may have a variety of responses to your decision to leave. They may act shocked and say they didn’t know anything was wrong. They may try to convince you that things are not that bad. They may get angry and blame you for all the problems. And if all else fails, they may concede and offer to make changes. But, oftentimes their changes are only an attempt to get you back in the fold.

A FINAL THOUGHT…

Can CEO marriages really change? Yes! But…the ego of the Chief Ego Officer will not change quickly or easily. It will take work and practice to learn to exchange ego for humility. But it can be done. So, if you’re the Chief Ego Officer in the marriage, honestly and humbly enlist the aid of close friends, accountability partners, pastors, or counselors. Do whatever it takes to resign as CEO of your marriage. And if your spouse is the CEO, do everything in your power to share the problem and encourage them to change. Either way, you (and they) will be the better for it.

How to Waste Your Marriage…and Your Life

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I’m currently in a season where it’s hard to get everything done I need to get done. (Know how that feels?) So I thought, rather than not deliver anything, I would rewind a post from 3 years ago. It’s especially pertinent in our current times and I hope you find it helpful. – Bret

It’s easy to waste your marriage on things that don’t benefit you or your spouse. The problem is, you often don’t realize you’re doing it until it’s too late. So below are five contributors to a wasted marriage that you need to watch for. (To help you remember them, they form the acrostic – W.A.S.T.E.)

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The List – Let Anger Have It’s Way

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Note: We are currently in a series called “The List.” The list refers to a list of ways you can lose your marriage, and is based on information gleaned from over 20 years of counseling records and watching marriage fail.

Anger can be caustic to marriage at best and dismantling to marriage at worst.

IS IT WRONG TO BE ANGRY?

Anger itself is not the problem. Many religious people feel like it’s wrong to be angry, but anger is a normal and natural emotion that everyone will experience. We’re even told in the Bible that God experiences anger:

“And the LORD was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.” – 1 Kings 11:9. (ESV)

The problem is not anger, but rather the way we choose to deal with our anger. That’s the principle behind two New Testament Scriptures:

  • “Be angry and sin not…” – Eph. 4:26a (ESV)
  • “…let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger…” – James 1:19 (ESV)

HANDLING ANGER POORLY.

Again, experiencing anger is not the problem. Handling it poorly is. And we handle anger poorly in the ways we talk about it and the ways we express it.

Talking About Anger.

Because we’re often taught that anger is bad or wrong, we tend to use words that minimize our anger and make it more palatable. Instead of coming right out and saying, “I’m angry,” we say things like:

  • I’m peeved.
  • I’m miffed.
  • I’m frustrated.
  • I’m aggravated.

These sound kinder, but they often short-sell and misrepresent what we’re really feeling. To the listener, these words make it sound less important than it really is.

Expressing Anger.

People express anger in a variety of ways. Oftentimes, the way people express anger is either the way they saw it expressed growing up, or it’s in opposition to the way they saw it expressed growing up. Below are some of the general ways people poorly express their anger:

They keep it to themselves.
These are the people who are angry, but they try to go on and act as if everything is ok. Maybe they were led to believe that anger is wrong or bad. Maybe they’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. Maybe they don’t like confrontation. Whatever the reason, they try to keep their anger underground. The problem with this approach is the anger still leaks out in their body language, or their tone, or their withdrawal.

They become sarcastic.
These are the people who veil their anger in a sarcastic tone and comments. They may try to pass it off as humor, but it’s actually a back door approach to expressing anger. It’s a form of verbally throwing darts at someone in a hit-and-run fashion. The problem with this approach is it’s disrespectful and makes the anger worse for both people.

They become passive-aggressive.
These are the people who say one thing, but do another. They say they’re fine but act in ways that show they’re not. They may say it’s alright for you to go out with your friends, but then come up with all kinds of ways to sabotage that. They may say they’re perfectly fine with your decision, but then continue to point out reasons why your approach won’t work. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t resolve the anger and it keeps the other person stuck in a “darned-if-you-do-and-darned-if-you-don’t” position.

They go off like a grenade, and then they’re “fine.”
These are the people who go off with little warning, hurting everyone in their vicinity. And once they’re done, they feel better, because they’ve released the emotional pressure that had built up in them. It’s like someone pulling the pin on a grenade and walking away. The problem with this approach is that the person who pulled the pin may feel better, but they’ve left everyone else riddled with shrapnel and not ok.

They erupt like a volcano and continue to spew.
These are the people who are constantly angry. Like a volcano, their anger is rumbling ever-present below the surface.  You never know when they’re going to blow. And when they do, the only option for people is to flee the destruction. The problem with this approach is that, like a volcano, their angry eruptions forever change the landscape of the marriage and can cause their spouse to have no choice but to flee.

HANDLING ANGER PROPERLY.

Know this. Anger will not go away by itself. And if you try to ignore it, it will still have its way…one way or another. You will either handle your anger poorly or properly. You will either deal with your anger, or your anger will deal with you.

So let’s look at some ways you can intentionally and effectively handle your anger.

Recognize it.

The first step to properly handling your anger is being willing to recognize it’s there. You may be a person who knows when you’re angry, but often people have ignored their anger for so long they don’t recognize it anymore. I’ve had people in my counseling office who were telling a story that was obviously making them angry. I could see their face turning red. I could see them gripping the chair so hard their knuckles were turning white. I could see their jaw clenched. But when I asked them what they were feeling, they said, “Nothing.”

Pay attention to the warning signs. Watch for things like tensing up, quick and shallow breathing, your face feeling flushed, clenching your fists or your jaw, or anything else that might signal you’re angry. If you’re not good at recognizing when you’re angry, rely on others to point it out to you, until you can recognize it for yourself.

Own it.

Once you’ve recognized your anger, then you must have the humility to own it. It’s so easy to try to pass our anger off by making others responsible for it. This sounds like, “Well I wouldn’t be angry if you didn’t…” It’s also easy to deflect attention from our anger by pointing out the other person’s anger. This sounds like, “You’ve got some nerve talking about my anger. Look at all the times you’ve been angry!” If you want to handle anger properly, you must be humble enough to own it as your own problem.

Trace it.

Once you’ve owned your anger, then you need to figure out the real root of your anger. It’s easy to just trace your anger to the current circumstance, but you need to go deeper than that. Has your anger been building for a while? If so, when did it start? Does what makes you angry remind you of something or someone else? Does it go back to childhood?

I know these are hard questions that are not always easy to answer, so you may need to enlist others to help you investigate this. Sometimes it takes a friend, a pastor, or a counselor to help you get to the bottom of things.  But, someone once told me, “When you look underneath the anger, you will usually find hurt.” So look for the deeper hurt.

Replace it.

Once you understand what’s really driving your anger, then you’re ready to replace the anger. You do that by replacing the thoughts that fuel your anger and replacing the behaviors that allow your anger to fester and get worse. Again, this may take the help of a good friend, pastor, or counselor, but if you don’t replace the old thoughts and behaviors with something different…you’ll be stuck with the anger.

A FINAL THOUGHT…

Marriage is supposed to be a place where spouses enjoy safety and security. But unchecked anger in a marriage erodes and destroys safety and security. That’s why anger is so caustic to a marriage. Letting anger have its way can destroy a marriage relationship, and cause you to lose your marriage. And that’s why…IT’S ON THE LIST.

1 Samuel 25 – When You Want to Get Back at Someone

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Have you ever wanted to get back at someone, because they were treating you with contempt…even though you were treating them with kindness?

  • Maybe it was a boss who continued to pass you over, despite your hard work.
  • Perhaps it was a friend who stabbed you in the back, even though you had been loyal to them.
  • Or maybe it was a spouse who continued to ignore you, despite your on-going efforts to serve them and build them up.

In 1 Samuel chapter 25, David wants vengeance. After showing Nabel kindness, (1 Sam. 25:5-11) Nabal completely disregarded David and treated him with contempt. David was instantly angry and wanted to get back at Nabal. (1 Sam. 25:13)

And once your heart is set on vengeance, it’s hard to derail it.

But David’s desire for vengeance was interrupted by Nabal’s wife…Abigail. (1 Sam. 25:3,33) First, she takes responsibility for Nabal’s sin, then she reminds David of his commitment to live rightly before the Lord and allow God to decide whether someone gets their “just rewards.” She averts David’s anger, allowing God to settle things in His own way.

How often I’ve been like David and wanted to “strap on my sword” when someone mistreated me. The feelings are quick and automatic.

But God has sent us an Abigail, in the person of Jesus. Jesus comes to us, having taken the sins of our Nabal on Himself. He reminds us we are to live Christ-like in the face of accusers and abusers. If we, like David, will allow the Holy Spirit to interrupt our vengeful attitude, then we will respond in a more Christ-like manner and trust God to administer the right justice. (Deuteronomy. 32:35) (Heb. 12:24) (1 Sam. 24:15)

So when you want to get back at someone, listen to Abigail. Listen to Jesus.