Tolerance alone is not a strong enough foundation for a happy marriage; it must be coupled with acceptance and understanding. Therefore, if you truly want successful marriage, one of your marriage goals should be to move from tolerating each other’s weaknesses and flaws to true acceptance and understanding.

Tolerance means enduring your spouse’s shortcomings whereas acceptance and understanding, means seeing your spouse’s shortcomings as part of the bigger picture of who they are as a person. Tolerance wears thin quickly after the honeymoon stage of married life but acceptance and understanding grows the longer you are married.

Moving Beyond Tolerance and Achieving Your Marriage Goals

Appreciate your differences

What you consider to be your spouse’s flaws may not necessarily be flaws; they may just be differences in values, aspirations and temperament. When you recognize these differences for what they are, they cease to be a threat to your relationship and it becomes a lot easier to accept them.

Maintain respect

When you truly respect your spouse, you don’t just tolerate their feelings and opinion. Instead, you appreciate and value them. The easiest way to maintain respect in a marriage is to always treat your spouse the way you would like them to treat you. This way, you don’t to constantly evaluate whether or not your action are respectful.

Stop trying to change your spouse

You’ll never be able to move beyond tolerance unless you stop trying to change your spouse. You need to stop holding on to hope that your spouse will change and accept that your spouse’s shortcomings are here to stay. You’re better of working on understanding and accepting your spouse’s flaws.

Happy marriages are not built on tolerance but on acceptance and understanding. If truly want a long and successful marriage, make it one of your marriage goals to stop tolerating your spouse and instead understand and accept them.