Comparing Your Marriage To Someone Else’s (and Why Not to do it)
Should you compare your marriage to others? Are you finding yourself looking at other relationships or marriages and asking why isn’t your marriage like theirs?
Everyone’s relationship is different, therefore, don’t compare your marriage to others. Here’s why…
What does comparing marriages look like?
Have you ever gone somewhere with your spouse and saw other couples and asked, “Why can’t we be so happy like they are?” “Why don’t we hold hands like they do?”.
When comparing your relationship with others, you are looking at what they have or what they are doing and wishing the same for yourself or your marriage. You want your relationship to look happy and blissful like someone else’s.
Sometimes this causes jealousy, envy, frustration, and even a broken marriage because you get so emotionally involved in focusing on what your marriage should look like but does not.
You may even go as far as comparing your spouse to another. Maybe your best friend told you that her husband writes a love letter to her every other week. Now you question your husband as to why he doesn’t do the same.
Maybe your boss says that his wife gives him a massage every night after dinner and now you wonder why your wife isn’t giving you massages.
Because others are doing something that your spouse isn’t doing, you begin to take it out on them. You have thrown out every other wonderful quality that they have just because they aren’t doing what others are.
This in return causes your spouse to feel frustrated, annoyed and maybe even embarrassed that you feel like what they give or do for you isn’t enough.
When you find yourself going down that road, stop! Don’t ever compare your spouse to others.
How do I stop comparing my marriage to others?
My number one advice for any married couple is to place God first in your marriage. We may not have the ability to make things better on our own, but God surely can.
Once we are in a place where our hearts and souls are grounded with God, our marriage continues on a path to success.
I can only hope that we prayed about our marriage before we got married, so God can protect our marriage and our family in the future. Emotions like jealousy and envy are practically non-existent if we focus on pleasing God and not others.
Try to impress God (not people) with your good heart and intentions. He will then reward you with a successful marriage.
He will create a world for you and your family. A world that you will have no desire to be like others because you will already have all that you need.
Once you place God first, your family, your marriage and everything in your life will fall into place, as they should. Don’t look onto others, look onto God!
Which leads me to my other point. Once you place God first, he will guide your steps into the right path for you to have a successful marriage and a successful life.
Many times, we are jealous of others because we don’t know who we are as a person. We need to have self-identity. You must know what you stand for and love yourself.
If you don’t love yourself, you cannot love others. It’s impossible. You won’t be able to share with others what you do not have.
By the time we are married, we should already have our self-identities. If you know exactly who you are, it doesn’t matter what or who anybody else is.
You should be happy with yourself and accept you, ALL of you. Once you know who you are and what you can offer and provide as a spouse, you won’t need to be envious of other couples or individuals.
Again, God made all of us to be different. We aren’t made to act, look and live the same.
You must understand that once you allow yourself to become jealous of others, you open the doors to a dark world of bitterness, disappointment, loneliness, and perhaps a marriage with no future.
What else can I do to stop comparing my relationship to others? Keep reading…
It’s important for you to express your feelings with your spouse. What exactly is your marriage lacking that you wish you had?
Be honest and talk with your spouse and explain what would make you feel better about your relationship.
Do you wish to have a dozen roses on the third of every month? Tell them.
Instead of hating your spouse for not doing the same as another, simply express your wants and needs. A loving partner will listen and do what they can to make you feel happy and satisfied.
Now, are all the pieces that your marriage is lacking coming from your spouse? Is it all their fault?
What have you done to make your marriage turn out the way you wish it would?
Are you initiating holding hands or surprising them and taking them to the new French restaurant that they’ve always talked about?
Instead of putting all the blame on your spouse, try taking a look at yourself and see if you’ve done anything to make your marriage blissful.
Build upon the positive, don’t complain about the negative. Ok, so maybe your spouse doesn’t send you cute love texts with heart emojis during your workday, but they come home and do chores around the home.
Or maybe they don’t take you on that big romantic trip to Paris, but he tells you and shows you how much he loves you every single day.
Find out how to become a better wife to your husband right now!
Want to improve your marriage? Learn how to become a better husband to your wife.
If you really sit and think about all the great things your spouse has and continue to do for you, those things you don’t have become less and less important as you soon realize, you’re not that far from having the marriage of your dreams.
Keep working and building on your strongest qualities as a couple, and you won’t need to compare your marriage to others.
Once you and your spouse understand that you should work to make things better together, you won’t be distracted as to what others are doing.
You need to spend more and more time together, learning and growing with each other. When you become dedicated to building on your relationship, your focus has now drifted away from others, and shifted towards you.
When you compare your marriage to others, there is also a strong possibility that you will turn others away.
If you are always unhappy and you continuously complain about your marriage, no one will want to be around to hear that, over and over again.
As someone who is always depressed about something such as this, your family and friends will soon start to feel depressed too. Always feeling down around others, can bring them down too.
Also, if your friends know that you are always jealous of others, they won’t want to be around you, as you may be jealous of them too.
They will start to feel uncomfortable knowing that they can’t be themselves with their spouses or share happy moments with you, as they know you will soon begin to crumble.
As friends we always try to support one another no matter what the other is going through. Your friends will try to support you if you are going through a tough time, but as a friend, you should also try to be there for them without getting jealous.
A true friend should never get jealous of the next. This is a sign of insecurity and this will ruin, not only your friendships but also your marriage.
I’ve saved one of the most important ways to stop comparing for last.
Are you on social media? Are you beating yourself up after a few swipes on your social media platforms?
Social media has one of the greatest influences on our lives, if we allow it. If you are already battling insecurities, social media will only make things worse.
Time and time again, we have been told that what we see on the internet, we can’t believe all of it.
This is very true. Social media is not meant to be taken to heart. People post things that others will want to see.
No wife will post a picture of herself crying because she just had an argument with her husband. However, she will post a picture of them at the mall with him buying her those $500 pairs of shoes.
Be very careful about what you take seriously on social media. Social media has ‘influencers’, which are there to influence our minds.
You can’t think that any relationship on social media or not, doesn’t have bad days, because they do. No marriage is perfect regardless of what you see on social media.
If you find yourself easily getting jealous or envious of couples on social media, get off of it!
Stay off of social media as this will cause you to not appreciate what you have and you may just lose yourself and your marriage because of it.
Don’t compare your marriage to someone else’s. Every marriage is different, so no need to be jealous of what you see or don’t see.
Always put God first to eliminate feelings of jealousy and envy. Work on yourself and figure out your self-identity.
Communicate with your partner and tell them what you need. Don’t blame your spouse, contribute to your happiness and build upon the positive traits of your marriage.
Spend more and more time with your spouse and be genuinely happy for those around you. Lastly, take a long vacation away from social media.
Have you ever found yourself comparing your marriage to someone else’s? What did you do to overcome that? What worked and what did not work for you? We would love to hear what helped you through the process in the comments below.
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Thank you so much for sharing this informative post. I agree for sure you should never compare anything about your life to others… first and foremost and I have been with my boyfriend for 25 years this year and we never got married but have 2 kids together that are now in college and high school. It just works for us and all of our family members that are married are divorcing…so we seem to be the winning couple when everyone used to make fun that we never got married. I always said I love the Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn relationship and that is exactly how we are 🙂 Happy and loving each other more and more with every passing day!
You’re welcome! I’m glad that you guys have figured out what works for you. That’s all that matters. Once you figure that out, there’s no need to compare your relationship to anyone else’s. Congratulations on your blissful 25 years, and wishing you 25 more! Thanks for visiting.
It’s so hard to not compare your life, your marriage to others. But it’s the worst thing you can do. We are all different and all special in our own ways.
You are exactly right, Heather. Build on the foundation that you and your spouse have and focus on that. We are not meant to be the same. Thanks so much for visiting.
It is definitely important to focus on your marriage. Each one is unique and you can’t look to others for how to handle what is unique between you and your significant other!
BINGO!! Focus on what makes your relationship work. Build on that to create something special to be shared between you two. Nevermind what anyone else have. Thanks so much for stopping by.
I think not only marriage, but we also should not do comparison with other, no matter what aspect.
This is indeed a challenge for many. You’ve got to have that self-identity to get rid of any insecurities you may have. Work on yourself and love yourself. No need to compare. Thank you for visiting.
Inspiring article indeed. Should never compare with other’s. Instead should work out to keep my relationship stable.
Thank you. Once you find what works for you, you will be too happy to be comparing your relationship to others. Thanks for stopping by!
Everyone is different, we hit goals at different times, have different dreams, etc. It is a lot like comparing yourself to others in general, it is best not to do it. Great read!
Thanks Luna! That’s right! We all have something different to offer– to the world and to our spouses. Focus on creating a world of happiness for yourself and your family. Thanks for sharing.
I agree comparing your relationship or life to others is sure to make you unhappy. Social media makes this a real struggle. Positive thinking or behaviour change has helped me alot with this.
Positive thinking and behavior change are great strategies to help with the challenge of comparisons. The more we build ourselves up, the less we need to compare. Thanks so much for sharing.
This is a fantastic post. Thanks for sharing. I agree only God can strengthen your marriage. Getting or wanting what someone else has may not be what hold your marriage together. Don’t waste precious time and entertain for isn’t the answer.
Thanks so much Tina! We’ve got to get the right mindset– on that path God wants us on. Once you are there, doesn’t matter what’s happening in other relationships, you’ve already began building a world of your own, protected by God. Thank you so much for visiting!
I’m the opposite of this. I look at someone else’s marriage and think “ I’m so glad mine is the way it is.”
Ashley, I feel you on that one. 🙂 That’s why it’s also important to be very grateful for what we have and not tear it down. Focus on your own relationship and create your own happy marriage. I’m also very happy to hear that you have a wonderful marriage. Wishing you guys the very best. Thanks so much for sharing.
I love this! Focusing on God as a priority is definitely a must! Also, we all just need to stop comparing anything in our lives. However, it’s so hard to do with everything we are bombarded with. Thank you for this very important post! You are such an encouragement <3
Thank you very much Adriane. <3 I really hope to encourage couples to find that happy place within their marriage. Comparing, or competing with others for reasons as this, will only cause disappointment and hurt in the long run. You've got to let God lead you to where you are supposed to be so that you have a clear direction in life including your marriage. That is what makes it easier to avoid jealousy and envy in our lives. Thank you so much for visiting!
It’s never a good idea to compare yourself to anyone in your life, especially your marriage. You’ve given some great insight here on the topic.
I agree Lisa. I hope these suggestions can help couples to build on their own relationships and not compare their marriages to someone else’s. Thank so much for visiting.