EVERY relationship has a cycle. In the beginning, you fell in love with your spouse.
You anticipated their call, wanted their touch, and liked their idiosyncrasies. Falling in love with your spouse wasn't hard. In fact, it was a completely natural and spontaneous experience. You didn't have to DO anything. That's why it's called "falling" in love... Because it's happening TO YOU.
Falling is love is easy. It's a passive and spontaneous experience. But after a few years of marriage, the euphoria of love fades. It's the natural cycle of EVERY relationship. Slowly but surely, phone calls become a bother (if they come at all), touch is not always welcome (when it happens), and your spouse's idiosyncrasies, instead of being cute, drive you nuts. The symptoms of this stage vary with every relationship. At this point, you and/or your spouse might start asking, "Did I marry the right person?"
And as you and your spouse reflect on the euphoria of the love you once had, you may begin to desire that experience with someone else. This is when marriages breakdown. People blame their spouse for their unhappiness and look outside their marriage for fulfillment. Extramarital fulfillment comes in all shapes and sizes. Infidelity is the most obvious. But sometimes people turn to work,a hobby, a friendship, excessive TV, or abusive substances.
But the answer to this dilemma does NOT lie outside your marriage. It lies within it. I'm not saying that you couldn't fall in love with someone else. You could. And TEMPORARILY you'd feel better. But you'd be in the same situation a few years later. Because (listen carefully to this): THE KEY TO SUCCEEDING IN MARRIAGE IS NOT FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON; IT'S LEARNING TO LOVE THE PERSON YOU FOUND.
SUSTAINING love is not a passive or spontaneous experience. It'll NEVER just happen to you. You can't "find" LASTING love. You have to "make" it day in and day out. That's why we have the ___expression "the labor of love." Because it takes time, effort, and energy . And most importantly, it takes WISDOM . You have to know WHAT TO DO to make your marriage work. Make no mistake about it. Love is NOT a mystery. There are specific things you can do (with or without your spouse) to succeed with your marriage.
Love in marriage is indeed a "decision"... Not just a feeling .(The Truth)
2 comments:
learning to love the person you found!- unique concept
But sumtimes i wonder whether it holds equally good in all situations? No offence to the writer but this would work out in 5 out of 10 cases.
In situations of failure where, the concept of marriage itself has been based on false identities and unrevealed realities, loving the one does not serve the real purpose nor asking the question solve the issue, rather making a more informed decision supported with a strong frame of mind would erode the very need to forcibly love anybody or look back and ask the question.
I strongly feel that there arises no need for one to self punish oneself to love others who has to love other to keep the bond of marriage alive.
All said and done, a great article on whats happening to the people in the bond of marriage and live in relations, as i find this more popular in live in relations, where the couple is afraid of what to do when the relationship fails.
Hmm...true and well said! At a point in a marriage when one feels if he/she doubts his/her choice of a spouse -is also to look within oneself for the happiness. And i dont mean this from a truly spiritual sense, from an emotional one too. A realization of the happiness that one brings to the other and vice versa and the admission of impermanence of everything - that there is nothing to say that at a point in the future this person might have strong feelings for someone else again, but that is where like the post very nicely puts it, the key is to love the person one found. Call it the commitment of a marriage or in any other semantic terms, its the same thing.
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