What Is Acceptance?

What does it mean to accept your mate? It means that you view your mate as a person of worth. It means that you like him as he is and can respect his right to be dissimilar from you. It means that you allow him to possess his own feelings about matters. It means that you accept his attitudes of the moment, no matter how they may differ from yours.

Although it is highly rewarding to accept another person just as he is, it is not easy to do. You will need to ask yourself some frightening questions. Can I accept him when he looks at life's problems differently than I? Can I accept her when she chooses a different method of coping with problems? Can I permit him to have separate likes and dislikes than I? Can I accept her when she feels angry toward me? Can I respect his right to choose his own beliefs and develop his own values?

Acceptance of others doesn't come easy because of the common resistance to permitting our spouses, our children, our parents, or our friends to feel differently about particular issues or problems than we do. Yet this separateness of the individual, this right each person has to use his experience in his own way and to discover his own meanings, is one of the most priceless possibilities in life.

Does this mean that one should pretend that his mate is perfect? Of course not! Acceptance means that you recognize the imperfections but that you are not going to concern yourself with these areas. Instead, you determine to accept your mate as he or she is—faults and all.

Some people feel that they have been practicing acceptance when all they have done is tolerated their mate. They have mustered the strength to restrain criticism but have continued their doleful looks, grimaces, glances, and long painful silences. And each of us can usually sense when we are merely being tolerated rather than being fully accepted. If you can begin to control critical remarks where before you freely stated them, you may well have taken the first step toward full acceptance of others.

An important prerequisite to accepting others at face value is one's ability to accept himself just as he is. Self-acceptance enables us to become more aware of others' needs and to feel less of an urge to rush in and fix up other people. We will become more and more content to be ourselves and to let others be themselves.

Principles of Genuine Love

Genuine love involves a commitment. Since it would be too demanding to enter a total personal commitment with several people of the opposite sex, we eventually must narrow our choice to one person. Most people do not have the emotional energy to maintain several love relationships concurrently. It is too exhausting.

Immature and inexperienced persons often enter personal commitments that they later find impossible to honor. Moonlight, music, and romance go to their heads, and they make a promise of love that they later find themselves unable to live with. Such people abandon the commitment made, head for the courts, and proceed recklessly toward a new love relationship without ever challenging their personal ingenuity, developing their resources, or testing their coping abilities. Love will work if we work at it, but people today fail to work at giving love a chance, and wise individuals select carefully before investing such a sacred commodity in a lifelong commitment.

Genuine love is unconditional. A love with conditions attached isn't genuine, and only in an atmosphere of unconditional love can we lower our defenses enough for intimacy to develop.

A certain housewife who sensed conditional love from her husband told how his love seemed to be based on whether the house was clean and orderly at all times. She said that she needed to know he loved her whether the house was clean or not in order to keep the house clean! Similarly, a woman may sometimes give sexual love based on conditions to which her husband must measure up. Such a wife promises to gratify her husband's sexual needs provided that he completes tasks beforehand or that he meets certain standards of behavior.

Perfect demonstrations of unconditional love are not consistent with human behavior. Our emotional and psychological weaknesses prevent us from being totally free to give love unconditionally to others. But unconditional love provides an ideal toward which we may strive.

Genuine love attempts to meet the needs of the other. A favorite cartoon of mine shows Charlie Brown in his pajamas on his way to Snoopy's doghouse with a glass of water. The caption reads: "Love is getting someone a glass of water in the middle of the night."
It rarely taps our energies to be loving when our mates are affection ate and considerate. But how difficult it is to be loving under more trying circumstances—when he speaks unkindly, when she refuses to listen, when he is late for meals, when she neglects the mending.

In the face of such problems, I have developed what I call "the test of love." A person is to respond in a loving manner even though the mate has acted thoughtlessly. When we can dedicate ourselves to fulfilling the needs of the other even though our own needs have been thwarted, we are exercising genuine love.

Genuine love enables us to love ourselves. Genuine love of another is premised on a genuine love for oneself. The Bible asks us to love our neighbors as ourselves. The implication is clear: Whatever we would do for our neighbor, we should also do for ourselves. In the marriage relationship this means that we will do for our mates what we do also for ourselves.

Christians often find this concept difficult to grasp, because much of the Christian doctrine revolves around "doing for others. " We have regarded thinking of "self" or feeling worthy as inherently sinful. But loving oneself does not involve pride or a noisy conceit. Instead it is a quiet sense of security blessed by feelings of adequacy. When a person possesses such self-respect, he appreciates his own worth. He is able, in a healthy way, to assess his abilities in a realistic manner and feels assured that he is equal to others. Pride, however, involves an unrealistic appraisal that leads one to feel superior to others.

The thought of appreciating ourselves or feeling worthwhile is often a foreign thought, yet marriage partners can engage in satisfying relationships only in proportion to the respect and belief they hold for themselves.

Genuine love allows the other to be himself. Love is not possessive (1 Corinthians 13:4). Genuine love, then, affirms the uniqueness of the individual by the marriage partners giving their mates a freedom to be themselves. It does not attempt to possess or manipulate others. It means that we will preserve our mate's freedom to think his own thoughts, retain his own feelings, and make his own decisions. It releases others to become their best selves according to how they perceive the picture.

Such a love leaves room for others to have a variety of friends and interests beyond the marriage relationship, for we each need a certain amount of "space" in which to develop our identities and potentialities. By not attempting to become the other's entire life, we free him or her to enjoy the full range of life's wondrous experiences.

Genuine love is permanent. One of the most beautiful characteristics listed in I Corinthians 13:8 is the permanence of genuine love. Love never fails. Yet the divorce courts are jammed with bitter and disillusioned couples, all of whom at one point or another claimed to be in love.

Much of what we call love today begins with ardent passion, but like a beautiful plant, it will wither and die if the parties involved do not understand how to nourish and care for it. Love, even genuine love, is fragile.

It takes self-discipline to be a genuinely loving person. In the first chapter I quoted my favorite definition of marriage: "the total commitment of the total person for a total life." The key word is commitment, which in turn implies permanence.

In our marriage it operates like this. The feelings and circumstances of the moment cannot alter the love that Harry and I have for each other. Our commitment to one another holds us permanently together even though our emotions may fluctuate. At times Harry fails me, and my romantic feelings die. On other occasions I seriously falter in my efforts to be a genuinely loving mate. Sometimes we find ourselves consumed with feelings of anger, resentment, bitterness, and despair. But we have pledged ourselves to one another in an uncompromising decision when we echoed the words: "In sickness and in health ... for richer for poorer ... for better or for worse ... from this day forward .....Our romantic feelings may fail us, but our genuine love holds us together through those troubled times.

The key to putting the principle of genuine love into practice is selflessness. Fulfillment in a total love relationship comes as one matures out of self-centeredness into genuine love. The way to receive love is to give it. Jesus said, "Give, and it shall be given unto you" (Luke 6:38), and the teaching He enunciates applies equally to the area of marriage. If you want a deeper love relationship, begin by giving more love. Instead of waiting for your mate to demonstrate affection for you, take it upon yourself to initiate the first actions. Discover your mate's needs, and begin to fill them now!

Genuine Love

We have emphasized that romance is a needed commodity in images today, but love means far more than just the feelings expressed in romantic affection, as important as they are. Dr. Karl -Menninger, a great Christian psychiatrist, expressed it this way: "We not fall into love; rather we grow into love." Love in marriage matures as a couple applies the principle of love in everyday life. Genuine love, then, goes beyond the feelings of love and becomes a principle that must be put into action. We must not only expect to be treated with love and consideration, but we must also act with love and consideration.


Yet it is very difficult for most of us to consistently express our love y in and day out. Few of us feel like being tender, thoughtful, considerate, and helpful every day of our lives, because our feelings are easily altered by moods, foods eaten, the weather, illness, the reaction our mates toward us, and a host of other variables. Since feelings are stable, those who contend that love is primarily a feeling will make stable lovers. They will proceed through life indulging in what feels good and pursuing "that old feeling" immortalized in song.


Of course feelings constitute a component of love. Love wouldn't very interesting or much fun it we didn't have "that feeling." seed, the first attraction between individuals rest primarily on feels, and a love relationship will hardly ensue unless love feelings surface.


However, in marriage some of the early feelings of young love dwindle. No one can constantly live at an emotionally feverish high. When these first feelings diminish, moments will come when emotional satisfaction in the relationship seems relatively low. Negative slings may poison the atmosphere. At these times we must exercise principle of acting love. With the passing of time and by exercising principles of love, young love can mature into a more genuine love it binds hearts and lives together—counteracting negative feelings.

Love Your Mate

From the crib to the grave we all reach out for someone to love us and for someone we can love. Indeed, love is necessary for survival. Without it we lose the will to live; our mental and physical vitality lessens; resistance lowers; and fatal illnesses can result. When we experience love, we glow with a radiance that affects us physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.

For the lack of love thousands commit suicide each year. Another multitude flock to the divorce courts to free themselves so that they can begin their search for love again. Mental hospitals hold many who, for the want of human affection, have slipped beyond the reach of sanity. Battered and neglected children suffer marked signs of neurosis or psychosis. Research has shown that infants who lack a close, affectionate relationship with their mothers not only reveal signs of emotional disturbances but are physically dwarfed as well. Within the homes for senior citizens sit thousands of aged fathers and mothers—unnoticed, unloved, and dying a tear at a time for want of affection.

Dr. Smiley Blanton, in his book, Love or Perish, says, "For more than forty years I have sat in my office and listened while people of all ages and classes told me of their hopes and fears.... As I look back over the long, full years, one truth emerges clearly in my mind—the universal need for love.... They cannot survive without love: they must have it or they will perish."

When love fails, marriages fall into ruins and impossible frustrations deluge those involved and those around them. Such emotional pressure results in juvenile delinquency, adult crime, alcoholism, and various forms of drug addiction. Finally, the attempt to destroy oneself may end this ruinous cycle. As Dante observed, "It is love that spins the universe, and when we fail to use love properly, all of life suffers."

The truth is, we all crave love in huge quantities, and sometimes it seems that we can never get enough. Love is, in fact, the single most important force contributing to our total well-being. Impelled by its motivating power, we can forge ahead through life's bitterest moments and withstand insults and cruelty.

We must be realistic about such wishes, however, for it is unlikely that we will ever be loved as completely as we might wish to be. .-'anyone expecting unqualified love all the time expects more than is humanly possible from another person. Furthermore, it is only realistic to recognize that—right or wrong—society demands a certain standard of performance before it deems us lovable or even acceptable.