My mission today is to take back the word “Pollyanna” from the people who use it as an insult. Today, “Pollyanna” refers to someone who naively ignores reality in favor of seeing only the good or pleasant parts of life. Nobody wants to be naïve, and we can’t solve life’s problems if we persistently ignore them, but using “Pollyanna” that way is unfair to a wonderful fictional character.

For those who’ve never seen the Disney classic starring Hayley Mills, you can read a quick summary of the plot on Wikipedia. The important point is that Pollyanna learned to play the “Glad Game” from her father, a poor missionary. The game sprang from her disappointment when, instead of finding a longed-for doll in the barrel of donations sent to the missionary family, she received a crutch. Her father said she should be glad that at least she didn’t need a crutch because both her legs worked. He assured her that in any situation, you can find something to be glad about if you try hard enough. 

Pollyanna has already needed that lesson badly in her short life. Her parents have both died, and she’s come to live with her rich but cold Aunt Polly. Her determination to find the good in everything, including the town’s cranky inhabitants, begins to change hearts. The love and joy she puts out into the world comes back in her time of greatest need, when a fall leaves her paralyzed with an uncertain future.

What do Pollyanna and the Glad Game have to do with a happy marriage? If you’ve been married for more than a week, you’ve probably figured out that your spouse isn’t perfect. He may even—shockingly!—have irritating habits and traits. How we respond to those traits can make or break our relationship. Step one—learn to overlook them. And for extra credit, learn to love them. Here’s an example from my own family.

My husband is a funny guy. It’s one of the things I first fell in love with. He kept me laughing throughout our courtship and early married life. But what I gradually learned is that when he finds a joke he likes, he doesn’t let go. He’ll make the same joke every chance he gets. 

This tendency came into full flower one Christmas season. Our family of young children loved to sing Christmas songs in the car, and thanks to a Disney Sing-Along video, we knew all the words to “Up on the Housetop.” I’d noted to my husband that when I sang the chorus that starts “Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn’t go,” I always wanted to say, “Yo ho ho, who wouldn’t go,” like a pirate. Naturally, the next time we sang that song in the car, he sang, “Yo ho ho” in his best pirate voice. I laughed.

He sang it the same way the next time. And the next. Pretty soon, I stopped laughing. I started to be really irritated. Why couldn’t he just enjoy the joke and move on? That feeling persisted until one day, as I sat in the car with my jaw clenched when the kids started singing about Santa’s reindeer landing on the roof, it occurred to me that I could hold on to my irritation or I could throw myself into the joke and join the fun. So, I tried. I had to do some deep breathing because it’s hard to sing with your jaw clenched. But once I started, it became a pleasure to sing and laugh with my family again. And ever since that long-ago Christmas, the pirate-y version of “Up on the Housetop” has become one of our family’s inside jokes, those little things that hold us together.

Finding the good in the people around us, especially our spouses, doesn’t require being naïve or ignoring reality. It does require letting go of annoyance and petty frustration. Go ahead and give it a try. Breathe deeply, relax your jaw and your shoulders, and sing. Pollyanna would approve.