Consider these scenarios:
~ A husband plans a special weekend away. He takes care of every detail including a variety of surprises that he hopes will please his wife. But the memories they make are more disappointing than special.
~ A wife secretly saves the funds necessary to purchase a birthday present for her husband that they normally wouldn’t be able to afford. She’s hoping he will be excited. But when he opens her gift his reaction looks more like shock and anger.
~ A husband casually prepares to head off for his work day. The physical intimacy he and his wife shared the night before has him feeling confident things are well in his marriage. When his wife looks distant and responds coldly to his goodbye, he is left confused.
So what did go wrong? Of course, the stories are fictional and in real life, situations like these are complex. But one of the things that leads to these situations like is mistakenly thinking that one big positive experience can make up for lot of little negatives.
In this month’s challenge (April 2015) you were asked to think about a relationship dynamic we called “Invitations.” These are the opportunities we offer to others to connect with us. We drew a distinction between the Big Invitations and Little Invitations. In the stories above, one or both spouses have been missing the Little Invitations to connect with each other. Then, when they attempt to make up for it with a Big Invitation, it’s treated with hesitation, suspicion, or even rejection. The result is confusion and pain.
Comparing the workings of a marriage relationship to a bank account is popular among marriage experts. The point is typically something along the lines of—you must make regular deposits in the love bank of your marriage. We don’t disagree. In fact, the April challenge is really making a very similar point. It’s the financial metaphor that is seriously flawed. For example, if I think of all my interactions with my spouse as being similar to a cash deposit, I might conclude that choosing not to invest on a particular day is only one less dollar in my marriage love bank. At the end of the week, when I am not so busy, I will make a big $100 kind of deposit. I reason that will certainly have a much bigger impact. And if it were really about dollars it would be true. But were talking about relationship not money.
Here’s where the banking metaphor completely breaks down. When your spouse reaches out, inviting you to connect relationally, and you turn away, it’s a little taste of rejection. You don’t merely miss an opportunity to make an investment, you create a painful debt.
When the normal pattern in your relationship is to accept those offers, being too busy to accept a Little Invitation now and again really is not a big deal—it happens to everyone. But when you pass them up frequently it stings. And when turning down Invitations is a pattern it’s destructive and painful.
This is why we have stressed the point that a Big Invitation can not make up for a pattern of missing the Little Invitations. In fact, it can make things worse. When we fall into a pattern of declining the Little Invitations we create a painful expectation that we are not that interested in relationship. It’s not hard to understand then why our Big (make-up) Invitations would be met with skepticism. So, the key is to focus on the Little Invitations. Develop a pattern of embracing them. Then you’ll have the substance of a good relationship that can be celebrated through those Big Invitations.
