20 – Forbearance

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (Colossians 3:13)
Shirley and I both snore. It can be very annoying to be awake while your spouse snores, but we don’t let it damage our marriage. Sometimes we use earplugs, sometimes we push on our spouse to get them into a better position, but we don’t fight over it. Forbearance is the choice to put up with a weakness, failure, or annoyance, on the part of another person. You need forbearance in every human relationship – your boss, your mother, the waitress, and the paper carrier. If you don’t have the ability to forbear, life is going to make you a raving lunatic.
The verse above mentions both forbearance and forgiveness. They are not the same thing. Forbearance applies to things that aren’t really hurtful, but aren’t what you’d like. Forgiveness applies to the times you have actually been wronged. We want to say more about forgiveness in the next chapter.
Any two people will have hundreds of things that they do differently. Many of them will impact their partner, especially use of time, money, the house, and other possessions. Many of these differences call for forbearance.
Just because you haven’t said anything about something, doesn’t mean you are forbearing. If you are carrying resentment or can’t let go of something, you aren’t forbearing. If something bothers you, you really only have two healthy alternatives: let it go or talk about it in a constructive way. If you can’t let it go, you’d better talk about it. If you hold it in, it may come bubbling to the surface at just the wrong time.
In a casual relationship, you may find it easy to let a lot of things go. In a deep relationship, and particularly in marriage, you have much greater impact on each other and there are more things worth talking about. This is one reason that couples may start fighting more after they are married than they ever did when they were single.
However, in marriage, there are so many things you face; it isn’t worth making an issue about them all. You just have to let some things go.
Forbearance for Now – Some forbearance is temporary because you know the issue will go away. You may not like changing your baby’s diaper, but you expect that you won’t always have to. In some cases the issue isn’t going away by itself, but you may have to exercise temporary forbearance because the time isn’t right for bringing it up.
Occasionally, there may be something that you feel you need to talk about, but you know you should wait for a more opportune time. For example, suppose a wife feels that her husband isn’t doing enough around the house to help her. She has examined her heart and asked if she is being selfish or if this is something she really needs to bring up. This is an issue that is going to impact her life nearly every day, and she has decided she must talk about it with her husband. However, his employer is going through a busy season right now and her husband has had to work extra hours and some weekends for the last six weeks. She may decide that this is a bad time to bring this up and that her concerns can wait for a few more weeks until her husband gets back on a normal work schedule. If she makes this choice, forbearance means that she will continue to do her work at home with a good attitude. She will not allow resentment or anger to take root in her heart.
If, instead, she begins to make rude remarks and drop little hints, she might think she is setting the stage for the talk she wants to have later. It is more likely that she will undermine that future talk. She may irritate her husband on this subject without ever giving him the opportunity to respond in a constructive way. By the time she brings it up, he may have a hard time seeing it clearly.
If she feels like she is not able to put off talking about the issue, she may bring it up, but recognize that she shouldn’t expect much change until her husband has more free time. There is some help on how to confront an issue in a healthy way in chapter 32.
Learning From Conflict - If your differences cause conflict you need to look closely at what your differences are. Your different perspectives may be meant to help you both. We once talked to a couple who had conflict over how to respond to a restaurant order that wasn't right. One wanted to complain and get it right. The other wanted to just eat what was given to them and not worry about it. These are not right and wrong points of view. There are things in life we need to confront and things we need to let go. The person who has an easy time living with a cheeseburger when they ordered a hamburger will one day need help confronting something that really does need to be fixed. The person who is great at confrontation will sometime need help accepting things that really can’t be changed. Mr. Confronter and Mrs. Get-Over-It-Quick were given to each other to help each other.
Once you begin to accept your differences as being helpful to each other, there will be more things that you can simply let go.
Talk About It – Give each other examples of times you have practiced forbearance. Offer examples of times you now wish you would have practiced forbearance but didn’t.