Near a small village in Italy, the 5000 year old skeletal remains of a young couple has been unearthed holding each other lovingly locked in what’s been dubbed as the “Eternal Embrace.” Immediately after its publication, this beautiful picture vent viral as every romantic couldn’t resist the notion of the forever love it represented. However, for many of us who have been scorned from our divorce(s) and with the evening news bringing us yet again another break up of two people we thought were so inseparable; we can’t help but believe that the opposite is true and beg to ask the question is forever even possible anymore? Well the answer to this question is Yes and No.
First let me explain the “No” part of the answer: It’s not possible to feel an eternal bliss for someone every moment over a 50 plus year married life. This fairy tale Hollywood “Happily-Ever-After” crap is just not reality. (I don’t care how happy they look on Facebook:) The reality is–life is hard. Short term things always get in the way of forever. Your spouse no matter how perfect you first think they are, will at some point disappoint you and over time they will certainly begin to appear less green than those standing on the other side of the hill. This is because we are all imperfect. (Sorry, but this means you, too!) Marriage is so good about stripping away all the mysterious layers you were first attracted to; revealing a flawed, imperfect, neurotic person beneath who can no longer be disguised or hidden away from the other. There are many scientific reasons why a loss of attraction occurs over time. I won’t bore you with them here as they are certainly outside the scope of this post; but we have all felt the phenomenon of being madly in love with someone only to be disappointed months, weeks, or even years later. This loss of attraction can be devastating to the notion of spending forever together. After all, wasn’t this person suppose to make you happy? Wasn’t this person suppose to just magically know everything you needed before you even knew you needed it? Well again the answer to that is always No. This is why relationships will always be so hard because we expect and even demand someone to come and save us from our boring selves and fill our lives with never ending pleasure and fun. However, when this doesn’t materialize, then it’s easier to place blame on our spouse rather than accept that we are all responsible for our own happiness. You see, fantasies have no flaws! Fantasies will always be perfect but reality is much different. (As you’ve probably discovered during your first try at marriage.) Maybe we can change this the second time around which brings us to the Yes part of the answer.
Please don’t lose heart, it’s still very much possible to have a forever love with someone. So long as you understand that you both must accept each others imperfections and stop thinking this person will be the savior to all your ills. Realize no matter how hard they try, your future spouse is human. He/she will never be able to read your mind or know the moment you need something. Think of it like cultivating a flower—first, you must make sure that the soil is right. This means that YOU must be in the right place in your life emotionally, financially, spiritual and mentally to give a 100% effort to make forever happen. As Dr. Phil says marriage is not 50/50; it’s 100%/100%! Second, after the seeds have been planted they MUST to be watered, fertilized and nurtured. Same with a successful marriage, in order to have forever you must nurture and take care of what you’ve begun. If at any point the seeds are left unattended then they will certainly die in the ground. You and your Ex once experienced this “death” because your marriage was never cultivated 100% by the other. You know the romantic image of the two lovers running towards each other in an opened field? Now picture one person just standing still waiting for the other to come to them, or worse picture one person running in the opposite direction! This is how we are trying to have forever love in the modern world and it just doesn’t work. As I wrote in the post entitled Dating the same type of person you just divorced? the greatest advice I’ve ever received about marriage was to live your life running towards your goals and your dreams, then look around and see whose running along beside you– that’s the person you need to marry. When you approach your next marriage with this mindset, the two lovers running in the field scenario only makes sense if both of you are running along side the other and in the same direction; not towards or away from each other. After all, you’ll never be the same as your spouse. You’ll always have a difference of opinion about certain things or even a different way of thinking or doing; but if you’re running along side the other, then true happiness can be attained. Third, in order for anything to grow it must get plenty of sunshine. This means that if your marriage never has any light moments—everything seems dark or gloomy, drama filled, abusive etc; then there will never be any light to grow as a couple much less to take a marriage to forever. Learn to laugh and not cry, accept and not criticize; learn to love and not loath, and certainly learn to forgive and forget–that’s when the sunshine will come in. You do these things and the harvest of your marriage will be bountiful and certainly will have the potential to grow forever. So yes forever is still possible only when you reap what you sow.
Futher Reading:
