Love Makes the Difference

I heard about a woman who married a very demanding, hard, and unloving man. Her husband made her existence miserable by presenting her with a list of his demands and expectations… The woman’s husband insisted that she follow his list to the letter, and he never thanked her for anything. She complied with his demands, but she hated her life with this man.

The woman endured her miserable marriage for twenty-five years before her husband died. She vowed she would never marry again, but two years later she met a very kind man and got married. Instead of making demands of her, her second husband just loved her. The woman began to experience happiness for the first time, and she found herself enjoying even her routine daily activities.

One day as she was cleaning, she came across the old list of demands that her late husband had given her. She read the list again for the first time in years, and she began to laugh. She discovered she was doing these same things for her second husband, and even more. The difference was that now she was enjoying these things, whereas before she hated them and only did them as a duty. Her new husband’s love had radically transformed her attitude.