Sam Keen, an American author, philosopher and professor once said that "We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly”. In the pages of this website we often discuss how people are inherently imperfect, despite having seemed perfect when you first met them. So to search for the ever elusive Mr. Right is an impossible task that will more often than not result in you dying a very lonely and disappointed person. Even if you thought you found Mr. Right the fact that you are reading anything on this website would suggest that you are starting to realize that he is not entirely the man you thought you married. This person who once was the light of your life and all you ever thought you would need to be happy now makes you so angry that words fail you and you may even contemplate divorce on occasion. But all is not lost. The man you fell in love with is still there! At least in part.
You may want to try to get your relationship back to the way it was when you met, however this is generally impossible to recreate. Does this mean you will never again be happy with your spouse? Do you have to just settle for the way things are or come to terms with ending the marriage? Certainly not. I only say that its nearly impossible to recreate that intense 'in-love' feeling because you have been living together as man and wife. You know quite a lot more about each other now, somethings perhaps you wish you didn't know, and things that have caused great pain or disappointment. To recreate those same feelings as you had before would require you to erase all those memories and start afresh. While some people might be capable of doing this, that quality is exceptionally rare. Instead, you should strive to get to know the person you are married to as they are right now, something you will have to do periodically throughout your marriage.
Continual Redoscovery
You may be wondering why these changes occur, thus making this process of continually rediscovering each other necessary. The answer is rather simple. You are in a state of constant change. Your spouse is too, as well as everyone you know and everything around you. Even your cellular construction is in constant change. Each year your body has completely renewed itself, old cells die off and are replaced by new ones... and quite literally, the person you were a year ago no longer exists. Despite the fact that you and your spouse live together, having many shared experiences, everything that happens in your lives will effect each of you in different ways. Even if you and your spouse never left each other's side and experienced all of the same things at the exact same time, due to the glorious fact you are two unique individuals you will change and grow in ways that are different from the way your spouse does.
A harsh but poignant example of this would be a couple that experiences the loss of a child. One person in the relationship may take the loss very hard, become depressed, lose interest in life and curse God for having taken their child from them. As where the other becomes more spiritual, thanks God for the lessons they have learned from that experience, develops a new zest for life and would like to move forward and continue building their family by having another child. How can it be that they respond so differently to the situation? They both loved the child dearly, as any two parents should, they both grieved the loss of the child, and yet one moved on and became stronger for it and the other succumbed to their grief and was never able to move on.
I pray none of you ever have to experience the loss of a child, but this helps to demonstrate that even though you share so much of your life with your spouse you both change in ways that are unique to who you are at your core. For some these differences can be insurmountable and they divorce for reasons of 'irreconcilable differences'. This is because they either failed to or were unwilling to start or continue the process of continual rediscovery of their spouse. Through this process there most certainly can be happiness after the honeymoon. It just will be with someone slightly different than you thought you were getting. And that's ok! You may even come to like this version of your spouse better once you take the time to truly get to know them.
So your challenge over the next week is to contemplate the major differences between you and your spouse, and how those differences affect they way you handle a situation. How are your differences a good thing? What can you learn from each other? Good luck!
You may want to try to get your relationship back to the way it was when you met, however this is generally impossible to recreate. Does this mean you will never again be happy with your spouse? Do you have to just settle for the way things are or come to terms with ending the marriage? Certainly not. I only say that its nearly impossible to recreate that intense 'in-love' feeling because you have been living together as man and wife. You know quite a lot more about each other now, somethings perhaps you wish you didn't know, and things that have caused great pain or disappointment. To recreate those same feelings as you had before would require you to erase all those memories and start afresh. While some people might be capable of doing this, that quality is exceptionally rare. Instead, you should strive to get to know the person you are married to as they are right now, something you will have to do periodically throughout your marriage.
Continual Redoscovery
You may be wondering why these changes occur, thus making this process of continually rediscovering each other necessary. The answer is rather simple. You are in a state of constant change. Your spouse is too, as well as everyone you know and everything around you. Even your cellular construction is in constant change. Each year your body has completely renewed itself, old cells die off and are replaced by new ones... and quite literally, the person you were a year ago no longer exists. Despite the fact that you and your spouse live together, having many shared experiences, everything that happens in your lives will effect each of you in different ways. Even if you and your spouse never left each other's side and experienced all of the same things at the exact same time, due to the glorious fact you are two unique individuals you will change and grow in ways that are different from the way your spouse does.
A harsh but poignant example of this would be a couple that experiences the loss of a child. One person in the relationship may take the loss very hard, become depressed, lose interest in life and curse God for having taken their child from them. As where the other becomes more spiritual, thanks God for the lessons they have learned from that experience, develops a new zest for life and would like to move forward and continue building their family by having another child. How can it be that they respond so differently to the situation? They both loved the child dearly, as any two parents should, they both grieved the loss of the child, and yet one moved on and became stronger for it and the other succumbed to their grief and was never able to move on.
I pray none of you ever have to experience the loss of a child, but this helps to demonstrate that even though you share so much of your life with your spouse you both change in ways that are unique to who you are at your core. For some these differences can be insurmountable and they divorce for reasons of 'irreconcilable differences'. This is because they either failed to or were unwilling to start or continue the process of continual rediscovery of their spouse. Through this process there most certainly can be happiness after the honeymoon. It just will be with someone slightly different than you thought you were getting. And that's ok! You may even come to like this version of your spouse better once you take the time to truly get to know them.
So your challenge over the next week is to contemplate the major differences between you and your spouse, and how those differences affect they way you handle a situation. How are your differences a good thing? What can you learn from each other? Good luck!
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