Marital Differences

Yesterday, my husband and I celebrated 30 years of marriage. Praise God!

Today we will take a look at how marriage is related to our temperaments and our reading life. Our quarterly book club read here at Tea, Talk & Tattered Pages is The Body in the Transept by Jeanne M. Dams, and I hope you’re reading this fun novel along with us!

The protagonist, Dorothy Martin, is a widow. She is still mourning the loss of her husband, and sometimes the grief creeps up on her. She is also learning to stand on her own feet as she takes on the challenge of living in a new country. Her sense of humor helps her cope. We see flashes of who her husband was, and how much he meant to her. We see how it was her husband’s and her shared dream to move to England, and after his death, she fulfilled it anyway.

Some novels can actually affect our marriage negatively. Ramona Zabriskie, author of Wife for Life: The Power to Succeed in Marriage, talks about a husband who came to her for help when his marriage seemed to be falling apart. After asking many questions, Ramona was able to ascertain that a series of novels had pulled his wife away from him. She had become so enamored of the male leads in the novels that she was more interested in discussing those fictional men with her girlfriends than spending time with her actual real-life man. How can a flesh-and-blood husband compete with some fictional hero?

This type of thing tends to happen with so called “steamy” romance novels in particular. The man that is showing Dorothy Martin some interest in the novel we are reading, though charming, is certainly not going to distract anyone from their real-life spouse. :) But it’s something to think about.

If a book that we are reading, fiction or nonfiction, is leading us away from a happy marriage, then it’s not serving us. Our marriage is something to treasure, something that takes daily tending like a beautiful garden. Ramona Zabriskie compares it to growing a mighty tree, that will shelter our own families and our descendants.

Some couples are actually able to share their favorite reads - reading together, or even reading the book separately as time permits but then comparing notes and discussing it. This can be a powerful bonding tool. If your spouse is not a reader, then maybe you can read aloud to him or her as you relax together.

Photo by Jayanth Gillella on Unsplash

Since I’m the author of a book about the temperaments, of course I need to bring those into play here. I think any temperament can be a reader, but they may have different reading interests, and they may react to books differently based on their temperaments.

My dad and my mom are both readers, but my dad would joke “hearts and flowers” when my mom would read aloud some beautiful touching passage from a book that she was reading. They set me a great example of both being readers, especially of spiritual works, but they each found the books that most moved their own souls. They sought out different writing styles.

I was recently privileged to give a talk for a group of couples, and the topic was the temperaments as they related to marriage and parenting. Here are some tidbits:

Our temperament is a gift from God, connected to our mission from Him. God gave us the people around us with the personalities that they have, to help us on our way to Heaven. Maybe they will help us by encouraging or inspiring us, or maybe they will help us by being a thorn in our side, and giving us opportunities to practice patience, forbearance and charity.

A choleric person is a natural-born leader, decisive and dominant. He or she has no patience with excuses or weakness; they are organized, efficient and get things done.

What if this person is married to a sanguine? A sanguine person is funny, outgoing, positive, full of ideas, but a little short on follow-through. The sanguine will volunteer for things but then might need reminders and assistance to finish the job.

If the sanguine and the choleric are married to each other, they are both outgoing and they can both be spontaneous, so those traits work well together. But the sanguine loves to spend money and enjoy life, and the choleric is usually on a mission. The sanguine can be very generous and can sometimes be taken advantage of by people because they have a generous, people-pleasing nature. The choleric, on the other hand, sometimes has a chip on their shoulder and is afraid someone will take advantage with them even when that threat is non-existent.

Can you see how these opposite traits can cause conflict in a marriage?

If that people-pleasing bouncy sanguine is married to a melancholic, the differences are even greater. A melancholic is easily hurt, sensitive, and pays careful attention to details. Sanguines — don’t. If a melancholic takes on a responsibility, (after careful consideration), it will be fulfilled perfectly and beautifully because they are perfectionists. Sanguines have to work very hard if they want to please a melancholic’s high standards. That can discourage both of them!

A sanguine, as we said above, loves to spend money, and melancholics tend to be savers. For more about the temperaments and money matters, check out this conversation I had with The Catholic Money Podcast: How do Temperaments Impact Money?.

What if that decisive choleric person is married to a phlegmatic? Phlegmatics are laid back, gentle and easy-going: a polar opposite to the driven choleric. Cholerics love to debate and argue, phlegmatics avoid conflict at all costs. Cholerics like to tackle the hard subjects in a group setting; phlegmatics are far more introverted.

So am I saying that if you married your opposite in temperament, you are up the creek? Absolutely not.

We often marry our opposite because we are attracted to the strengths in the other that we lack. A melancholic is drawn to the joyousness of a sanguine. The sanguine is attracted to the stability and dependability of the melancholic. The choleric’s energy fascinates the phlegmatic; and the phlegmatic’s peaceful, easy-going nature is restful to the choleric.

When we have conflicts in our marriages, sometimes it’s a matter of temperament. Do the differences that attracted you in the first place irritate you after a while? Sometimes. It’s very natural.

Let’s cultivate understanding of the other’s point of view, based on either temperament or gender differences. Let’s remember the strengths of our spouse’s temperament, that we can lean on. As a spouse, you not only have the benefit of your own strengths, but you can lean on your partner’s strengths too.

And yes, not only do we have to be patiently diligent in eradicating our own weaknesses, but we have to be patient with the weaknesses of “our other half” too.

*Clink* Here’s to many more years of happy marriage!

For more on this subject, check out this article on St. Thomas More and his marriage. To keep abreast of the articles, interviews and podcasts I do, please subscribe at my website for a monthly roundup: Subscribe to my monthly newsletter.