81% Better odds

If you do a quick google search of quotes regarding pride you will find websites titled, 50 Quotes On Pride, of Best 25+ Quotes On Pride or Pride Quotes (1415 Quotes).  Everyone one from the Bible to Pinterest to Psychology Today weighs in on the topic of pride.   Ezra Taft Benson, U.S. Secretary of Ag and Leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints saw pride as a powerful tool that Satan used to damage relationships.  He spoke about this topic in a talk titled, Beware of Pride, given in April of 1989.

“The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us….Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted in ourselves… Pride adversely affects all our relationships—our relationship with God and His servants, between husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee, teacher and student, and all mankind….. Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. “How everything affects me” is the center of all that matters—self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking.”

John Gottman also took notice of the effect pride has on marriage during his study in the Love Lab.  He wrote about those findings in his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.  He noticed a major difference in relationships when we can be influenced by our partner.  Meaning a couple who were able to influence each other had happier marriages.  In contrast he found that, “statically speaking, when a man is not wiling to share power with his partner there is an 81% chance that his marriage will self-destruct.”(116)  Gottman’s research also indicated this is problem that plagues men more than women.  Women through the influences of nature and nurture have an easier time taking direction and sharing power with their husbands.

Gottman teaches that couples must learn to yield and says that, “often in life you need to yield in order to win.” (125). He illustrated his point with a story about driving through traffic in a city. We can stop and demand the obstacles in our path to move, or we can find an alternate route.  Accepting that there may be another solution to a problem or another point of view, one you don’t see for yourself, is yielding. 

H Wallace Goddard in his book, Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, address the same issues.  He points out that the, “natural man is inclined to love himself and fix others.  God has asked us to do the opposite.  We are to fix ourselves and love others.” (69)  That desire to fix others is pride.  Goddard goes on..

“ We define the problem – whatever it is  - in terms of our partner. And we tell the story ourselves in ways that suggest we were earnestly and innocently going about life when our partners hurt us.  We are innocent.  They are guilty.  Our narrow focus keeps us form noticing our own gaps in knowledge our personal failings as well as the good qualities and intentions of our partner.” (72)

Benson, Goddard and Gottman all agree on this issue, even if their way of describing it varies.  Pride has damaging effects on relationships, especially marriage.  Pride justifies anger toward another person, pride demands our needs be met with perfection, pride creates negativity and rewrites our histories together from successes to failures. 

As a person who is competitive by nature, I want to be right.  I want to not only do everything myself, I want to do it better and faster than everyone else.   Falling into the cycle of pride comes easy for people like me.  We have to find the missing keys first, not because we want to be helpful, but because we want to show our spouse how much better we are at finding things.   We don’t like it when others do something for us, it feels like we lost the contest.  So, to stay ahead we find fault in their service.   It is everything that we are warned against.  Yet it is so easy to do.

I come from a long line of prideful people, we like to call ourselves things like, perfectionist, competitive, independent and other terms that keep us from having to face our own prideful natures.   My Grandmother gave me the best marriage counsel I have even received.  “Robin,” she said, “Just because you can do everything yourself doesn’t mean you should.  Save things for Josh to do to, allow him to be part of the marriage.”

This was advice given from experience.  There is no magic solution to this common problem.   When we feel ourselves starting to get prideful, we simply need to stop, repent, ask God to see things as He sees it and then change.  We need to look first at ourselves and then just love each other. 

This was advice given from experience.  There is no magic solution to this common problem.   When we feel ourselves starting to get prideful, we simply need to stop, repent, ask God to see things as He sees it and then change.  We need to look first at ourselves and then just love each other. 

If pride can ruin 81% of marriages... 
if we can make ourselves pride proof we have increased our...


odds of making it by 81%!