What about Grace in Relationships?

WHAT IS GRACE

What's grace? From a Christian perspective, grace is God’s unmerited love and favor given to all that wish to know and come to him. Unmerited means it can’t be earned. I often say that grace is something we deserve from God but don’t have the ability to earn. And without intending to pontificate or proselytize, I need to point out the Christian bible’s use of the term grace as a foundation for the points I’ll be making. According to the bible, we had no say in inheriting a sinful nature. We inherited this trait from our greatest great grandfather, Adam. And because it wasn’t our fault, we deserved a resolution for our condition. But because we are born in sin and are inherently lost, we didn’t have the natural ability to earn our way back into God’s righteousness by any righteousness we could muster of our own. So, in God’s wisdom, he gave us grace by allowing Jesus to die on the cross for the sins of the world. He took our place. And this allows God to view us through the righteous lens of Jesus' finished work, and not our own righteous.

But how does this grace theory apply to committed relationships? It’s very challenging to hit the committed relationship perfect partner lottery when we finally decide to settle down. Notice I didn’t say it’s hard to find a good person to settle down with. Actually, finding a good person to spend the rest of our lives with isn’t hard at all. But finding someone who equitably complements us and us them is one of the most difficult and challenging undertakings on planet earth. Yes, it’s very challenging to find a person who can meet our relative needs and wants without contradicting their own and vice-versa. Many committed relationships fail despite both partners being very good people. Think about it this way. Why do people commit? I answered this question in my very first blog. We commit because we have needs and wants that requires a partner to fulfill. Please don't misconstrue that to mean we commit because we need someone to complete us. When we look for someone to so-call complete us...often, we're looking for someone to do our work for us. That is...the work required to make us whole and complete, which often means freeing us from the paralyzing disfunction, ignorance, and baggage that disables self-awareness and unwittingly make us a danger to any future relationship we get involved in. And that's a recipe for relationship failure.

So, we should only commit to get needs met that only a partner could meet. For instance, having a spouse could be one of our needs or wants. If we desire one, we must find a partner. No one can be their own husband or wife. And no one commits to a relationship with the understanding that they’re getting nothing out of it, and that they’re just committing only to meet their partner’s needs and wants.

Let’s pretend that Walmart is your grocer. And let’s say that Walmart’s deal to you is that you pay a 300-dollar flat fee each month, and you can come in their store and get everything you need. But every time you go into Walmart, it never has what you really need. It never has the soap, detergent, and meat supplies you need. So now, you can’t properly wash your clothes, your body, and maintain your hygiene. Walmart supplying these things is why you chose them as your grocer. Question is...will you stick with them or change stores? Most, if not all, would change stores.

Fundamentally, committed relationships work the same. When our needs aren’t being met by the person who commits to meeting them and seemed capable of doing so, as in the case of Walmart, we want to move on to the next person who can. The difference is…it’s usually not that easy to leave a committed relationship. Why? Because of emotional and love ties. And sometimes because of moral or religious convictions. And sometimes because of financial situations or children.

But does Walmart purposely not carry those items we need? Isn’t customer satisfaction one of Walmart’s bottom lines? Doesn’t customer satisfaction translate to Walmart satisfying its number one business objective, which is making money? If the answer to these questions is yes, this must mean there’s a pretty good reason Walmart isn’t stocking these items. Could it be that Walmart doesn’t have the ability to stock these items? Could it be that it doesn’t have suppliers? Could it be that it would be cost adverse to sell those items? Meaning Walmart would lose money if it sold these items because there’s no profit or benefit. If there’s no profit in selling these items, it can’t afford to sell them. Why? Because it has to turn a profit to cover the costs associated with running a business. It has capital costs, employee cost, and a litany of other costs that it must pay before it can turn a profit. And if it took such a negative hit on these types of items, it couldn’t stay in business. It couldn’t open new stores in other places in the country. It wouldn’t be able to give its employees raises for their hard work and effort. In other words, it would die. And if it’s dead, the relationship with its customers would be over, anyway. Committed Relationships are no different.

So, Walmart would have to risk losing the relationship with some of it's customers to find value and worthwhile for existing. Otherwise, it'd die and have no customer's anyway. This isn't Walmart being selfish. This is Walmart realizing that hanging on to some of its customer relationships would be the equivalent of committing proprietary suicide. And if it dies, those customers couldn't benefit from it anyway. Therefore, Walmart would be no good to these customers dead or alive. Because to live, it must not carry the items they need. But to keep all of its customers happy and satisfied, it must carry these items, which will naturally and dynamically lead to its demise. So, it's better for it to live without those customers rather than die at the unfair demands of those customers. And their demands aren't unfair because they're intrinsically unfair. That wouldn't be the case. Their demands would be unfair because Walmart literally cannot meet such demands without hurting or destroying itself. Has nothing to do with love, a lack thereof, or selfishness. This Walmart analogy is the perfect example of why I believe that when a loving committed relationship fails that it's no one's fault.

I don’t believe that people in committed relationships go out of their way to neglect their partner’s needs and wants. And I don’t believe they lack desire to meet them just because. I believe that often, they can’t meet them. Therefore, they can’t generate the energy to do the work of meeting them. Often, they have the desire to please their partner, just not in the way their partner may need or want them to. Their inability to satisfy their partner’s needs and or wants can be temporary or permanent. Their inability can be based on a lack of maturity and may be something they can grow into. Or it can be something that they don’t own the tools or ability for now or ever. And even though I believe their personal human nature dynamics can prevent them from owning such tools, I also believe that these innate dynamics can be overwritten much the same way we’re learning that our DNA can be overwritten. But for this overwriting to take place, it must start with a conscious choice to change such dynamics. Otherwise, they can’t follow through with such changes and will see such changes as harmful to their core person, character, and values. In other words, like the Walmart example, they'd see such changes as death. Why? Because such change would harm their natural and dynamic energy production. And over time, they'd die. Not literally, of course. But they’d die in the sense that over time, they’d naturally and dynamically lose interest in the relationship because it doesn’t naturally renew their energy production.

So, where does grace come in? Let’s use the Walmart example again. Let’s say that Walmart heard their customer base’s complaints and wanted to please it, despite what it cost it to do so. Therefore, Walmart added the deodorant, detergent, and meat supplies to its shelves at a financial loss. This would be Walmart showing grace to its customer base. It knows it can’t offer these products at a price it should to make it profitable because its customer base wouldn’t purchase these items at that price. This means Walmart must suffer loss to show its customers grace.

In committed relationships, grace is so important. But when it's offered, it means that the one who offers it must suffer or go without. Offering grace doesn’t mean overlooking behaviors that violate the commitment or marriage contract. It means offering our partner a line of credit until such a time they can mature to a place of meeting our needs and wants…our desires. The tricky part to this is the understanding that they may never meet certain needs and wants. And most don’t want to waste time offering grace when they may never get their needs met in return. According to the Christian bible, even God offers grace with an expectation. His expectation is that men and women would repent of their sins and seek to reestablish that holy bond that Adam broke. And according to scripture, He’s sworn that anyone that doesn’t do so can’t enter into His place of rest.

So, what do I say to those who fear offering grace because they may not get a return on their grace investment? First, I say that the person offering grace should make sure that the want or need he or she is asking their partner to meet is legit. Unfortunately, sometimes we don’t know what we want or need until we lose what we got. And sometimes what we think we need or want is based on some unrealistic expectation. And it isn’t until we lose what we got that we can see what we had. And at other times, we haven’t matured. And we think we’re the ones offering grace only to find out later that we’re the ones who needed it. But when a need or want is legit, and grace is being offered to the partner who’s not meeting that need or want, the attitude of the partner receiving this grace is so very important.

Back to our Walmart example. One of the worst thing Walmart’s customer base could do after it offered it grace is to complain about the items its offering its customer at a profit loss. Why? Because it’s basically giving these supplies away for the sake of the relationship with its customers. Worse than that, if the customer denies that Walmart is offering these items at a fair price and denies its allegiance to the community and its customer base, that would be a huge slap in the face for Walmart. One of the hardest things to stomach is when one offers grace to their partner and that partner denies that grace was offered to them. Why would a partner do that? They would for a few reasons. For starters, they would because the offer of grace means a sacrifice was made by the one offering grace. Two, it means this person made this sacrifice because of a lack or inability the person receiving the grace owned. Last, it means the one receiving grace couldn’t earn the owner’s favor, good will, and love on his or her own merit. This understanding carries a sentiment of blame, inadequacy, and indebtedness. Therefore, it’s easier to deny this grace than to accept and embrace it. But such a denial has the power to drain their partner’s remaining commitment of the energy, life, and hope he or she was hanging onto to restore the relationship to full capacity.

Other reasons partners deny this grace is, one, ignorance. When we offer grace, sometimes we don’t effectively communicate this to our partner and they’re ignorant of our motivation for doing so. Therefore, they either think those desires we complained about are no longer an issue, we’re finally seeing it their way, or we’ve made a change. Two, they take for granted that this is what we should be offering to them, anyway. Meaning, they’ve heard our complaints about certain desires being met. But now that we’ve offered grace, they think we’ve come around to seeing it their way, which in their mind is what they desire. This is especially true if they don’t own the ability to meet our desires, which are always based on our needs and wants. And this is especially true if meeting our desires conflicts with their own. Walmart’s customer base could have no clue about the profit loss it took to offer those items. Often, many don’t know how much grace they’re being offered in their relationship. Because they’ve taken for granted that that this is just what their partner does or should do. Sometimes, they don’t have a clue about how that person is suffering or going without their wants or needs, the very reason for which he or she committed, for the sake of keeping the relationship afloat and keeping hope alive.

In closing, offering grace requires suffering. In a previous blog, I mentioned reading where a woman said people divorce because they don’t want to do the work it takes to make marriage work. But the real truth is…people divorced because they’re tired of suffering from energy drain…as it requires energy to do the relationship’s work. Showing grace and mercy is very powerful when it comes to saving committed relationships. Again, grace is showing someone love and favor when they can’t earn it. Showing mercy is holding back punishment when one is justified in delivering it. Getting a divorce and or separating is always our choice to do. But the question we have to ask ourselves is, have we’ve done all we can do to save the relationship? And if we haven’t employed grace and mercy as I’ve outlined above…we haven’t. And for Christians reading this, this should be an obligation for us in our relationships as this same grace and mercy is what God showed and continues to show us.

As always, if you’ve enjoyed this blog series, please share it with others. And if you haven’t, please consider subscribing to receive the latest updates about future books, podcasts, and materials. I won’t sell your information. I value your patronage too much to do that. And always remember, committed relationships often cost more than their price tag!

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