Jealosy

Jealousy can harm a marriage. 

I’m not talking only about jealousy between husband and wife, 
but the jealousy that a wife’s friends or relatives may feel toward any woman who is happier than she is. 
Any man who has been married five years, has had his wife come home sad, due to another woman’s relational woes. 
It is standard social etiquette in certain times and places for the wife to enter a phase of mourning for another female’s heartaches, 
and to somehow punish her own husband in the process, just for being a man. You know what I mean. 

Men too, come across men with relational difficulties,
but men are better able to forget what they have heard and go home and enjoy their marriage. 

I suspect that some percent of women want to harm the marriages of other women when they broadcast their woes. 
It’s a way of getting even with men in general. 
Wives need to leave other women’s problems at their door and be determined to enjoy their marriages, children and homes. 

Also, husbands and wives are together able to be jealous of other couples.
The jealousy might be financial; a new car or piece of furniture that someone else has. 
It might be an empty womb. It might a level of social status they want, but can't achieve. 

The main ingredient to happiness is contentment. 
Not the kind of contentment that makes us quit trying, 
but the kind of contentment that comes from doing our best with the circumstances we are given.
 
And a person can be rich in one thing and poor in another. 
But we always seem to forget what we have, and we fix our gaze on what we lack.  

Eric J. Rose