For better or for worse. So far, so good. I don't see any "worse", we'll keep riding this wave forever. That's all I see on the horizon.
In sickness and in health. Of course! We'll have our bouts of cold and flu. Maybe a surgery or two along the way, but we can handle it.
For richer or for poorer. Since we're both working ... since he/she has such a good job ... since we don't have any big needs we'll be fine on that one. Most people just don't know how to spend wisely.
'Til death do us part. That's such a long time from now, and we're in it for the long haul. This one's just a given, right?
"So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." ~~Matthew 19:6
These, in part, are the vows you take when you marry. If you're young, you tend toward naiveté in what they really mean, yet their overtones give an eternal, "how can we miss" feeling. At this point, you have it all: love, tenderness, focus, plans, dreams, hopes, happy thoughts and little actual reality. Most definitely, many people do have a strong sense of reality as they approach the altar, offering their lives to their beloved with all these attributes -- and they already know the score because they have lived a lot more of life (by longevity or by hard hits of reality) than most others have. I understand that, and I think those people just may have a leg up on the rest of us.
And then you have the rest of us. You get the "Naive Newlywed" thing going, just as you have the "Perfect Parenting Plan" that you can so boldly assert (when you don't have kids of our own) at the first sign of a crying child or a red-faced, screaming parent. You, the inexperienced, have it in the bag.
You repeat the vows, knowing in your heart how much you mean them, maybe even writing them yourself to make sure you get the point across. You get it, already. You have God on your side, even. You are good to go. And so you go on, just like this, for weeks, months, even a few years. More or less.
And reality hits. Idiosyncrasies that first appeared interesting but annoy the living daylights out of you. She squeezes the toothpaste tube in the wrong place. He slumps in front of the TV all night and doesn't help in the kitchen the way he did when you were engaged. Both of you pitch tents on opposites sides of the "This Is the Way It Should Be" line in most every aspect of life. And you differ. You differ a lot. You never thought this would happen, and you can see your side so clearly and you try to explain it. You try to outline your needs, your desires, your wants. The funny thing about it is that you don't even understand what you're doing: making it all about you. It feels as if it's about "us", and you can even justify or rationalize it. The sentence, "If you would only _______ we would be so much happier," always sounds good from the speaker's perspective, but take one turn on the receiving end of that sentence and it's blame, hard and fast. You aren't making me happy. I'm standing over here hurting because of you. If you're not happy, look at yourself and what you're doing to me. We would be happy if you would change.
Now you have moved from Naive Newlywed to Selfish/Self-Righteous Saint without knowing when, how or why. When you share your troubles with others (not your spouse), you feel vindicated. Others agree with you, they often share the same list of complaints, and can see your spouse in the light in which you have painted him with vivid detail. You have started rolling a snowball, and beware. It will gain the size and strength to crush everything.
"That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." ~~Genesis 2:24
If you read books on marriage and some of the ensuing disappointment after the vows, you come to discover that every couple's story has many similarities. Your story is really not much different from the couple next to you. Aside from extreme circumstances (abuse, infidelity/adultery, etc.), couples can almost fill their names into the blanks and sheepishly raise their hands, admitting, "Yes. This is me/us." Likewise, even the extreme circumstances fit a textbook outline of marital and personal strife. Does it help to know we're all in the same boat? A little. What we need is someone brave enough, courageous enough, strong enough, selfless enough to get out of that boat and swim for the shore.
God designed marriage and designed each of us, male and female, to have different physical, mental, and emotional make-up so that we attract each other and support each other in that marriage. Each of us has strengths and weaknesses augmented by the other, which make a marriage strong.
"It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him" ~~Genesis 2:8
A helpmeet. Someone to help meet the needs you have, to fill in the blanks in the abilities and talents you don't possess. Someone to help you grow and learn as a person and as a couple. Instead, in these modern times you fight for independence, for equal rights and for the easy way. You put down the other person in your mind, actions, or words based on him being different from you. Her abilities make you feel inferior, and so you feel riled and self-righteous, and rail against her ways. Tip the iceberg with "feel good" social media postings, forwarded messages, and artwork noting in sum, "Get rid of everything and everyone who doesn't make you happy," and "Follow your heart, it will never lead you astray"," and we see just how selfish the world teaches you to be.
And you learn. Fast. You spiral downward, cutting ties with your mate because you don't want to have to live another day with this or that habit. It will drive you crazy, and it will not make you happy. You have lost fighting for "us" and have started fighting for "me." You think love is missing because it is, and you don't know why, but blaming him for not meeting your needs makes the most sense in the selfish/self-righteous world you have built. That's because you don't even know what love really is. Here's what it is not: a feeling.
“Love is not a feeling. Love is an action, an activity. . .Genuine love implies commitment and the exercise of wisdom. . . . love as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.....true love is an act of will that often transcends ephemeral feelings of love or cathexis, it is correct to say, 'Love is as love does'.”
~~M.Scott Peck
This is the pitfall of most marriages in trouble. Couples search for that loving feeling (now I have the Righteous Brothers singing in my head. Sorry.) and can't locate it. People start believing they have fallen out of love. What they have done, in reality, is fallen out of the practice of loving. They quit doing all the little things that they did when they first met, and in the first years of marriage when they doted on each other and celebrated everything. Love is not a feeling. It is a big bunch of actions and thoughts that don't lie there waiting for an invitation to happen. You either do or you don't -- the choice is yours.
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Make the choice to love. Pray. Make the choice to love your spouse. Pray some more. If you haven't loved in a long time it will lack feeling, but the feeling will grow as you go. The more you invest of your thought, time and energy, the more you will feel it. You may have built walls of resentment, as has your spouse, but you will slowly erode them with new energy for "us". Your spouse may not jump out of the boat with you, but that means you swim all the harder and focus on the shore. Don't quit, just as you didn't quit when it was all new and fresh. Find energy, use it, renew it. Love is the kind of energy that grows when you use it, it will not deplete or become old from overuse. Spare no emotional expense. Waste that energy! Don't adopt the mantra, "Go green!" on this one. Spend, spend, spend ... time, thought, action and HOPE.
Those newlywed vows pale in comparison to the battlefields we have set up in real life. We don't revisit vows often (and we should). We don't even know what they really mean (and we should). We hear them in a wedding ceremony and grow misty-eyed, and sometimes feel pain from falling short ourselves in the purity and focus of those lines.
The key to really loving someone is doing real life with him. People ditch marriages for the "feel good" of infatuation. Some remain in the shallow end where they can touch the bottom and paddle around easily without risk. They expect instant success after the "I do." The infatuation feelings we have when we first meet omit all the negatives. When the negatives arrive, and they will, you have to hone in on the person you married. Look for the good things, practice them in your mind, make them grow. Realize that the little things that irritate you are little, and you would put up with them from most other people. You would give that much time and patience to others. Give the same and more to your spouse!
Marriage is for life. Drop the naiveté which is starry-eyed and short-lived. Perfection isn't possible, and no marriage fits a movie script. Omit the selfish and the self-righteous from your day. Stop sharing with the multitudes (work, friends, extended family) and share with your spouse. Make real love fit in your real life.
It can happen for you.
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