We’ve all seen them…that couple that’s out to dinner looking like they would rather be anywhere else other than with each other. They sit across from one another with conversation, no smiling, and you can feel the distance and tension between them. They pull out their cell phones to fill the boredom and seeming disinterest and the only thing that helps them get through are the glasses of wine! It seems so depressing and everyone looking thinks that that must be what marriage is like. Yup that’s the story….get married…honeymoon….kids….distance…divorce. This can’t be life.
Well I had an epiphany this weekend when my wife and I spent time with a couple that has been married for 30 years. I was amazed at how engaged they were with one another, how happy they were to still be together, and how they expressed how blessed they were to have each other. I asked them what the secret was and did it take a lot of work and they said very simply:
“There is no secret we just love and support each other and our family and it’s not about work it’s about effort!”
I thought to myself …. WOW…just when I was waiting on a thesis or dissertation line the “answer” was very plain. For some reason, married people tend to be marriage’s own worse enemy…In a world that already too often devalues commitment and marriage and family institutions, married people tend to not understand that other people and the younger generations are watching and begging for permission to be HAPPILY married. But it’s hard to be confident, when you ask a married person about marriage and they tell you about how much “hard work it is” and how “miserable” it can be. Then they tell you about all of their horror stories about infidelity and betrayal and divorce. The husbands talk about how you lose your testosterone and stop getting sex and the women tell you how much the men “change” and become slack. Oh how inspiring!!!
No one ever stops to say that when they were down and out… that their mate supported them to the end.
No one brags about that when they wake up in the morning there is nothing better than waking up to their best friend.
Or, how when they come home they find peace in knowing they can find safety in that person they chose to spend their lives with.
They don’t tell you that their number one teammate and cheerleader is always there for them.
Or, that there is nothing like the freedom and vulnerability involved in having married sex!
They don’t stop to tell you the beauty in the growth of realizing that marriage is bigger than themselves and more about making their mate happy than making themselves happy.
How come no one ever broadcasts those things?
Sometimes we look and ask ourselves why the divorce rate is so high and why so many people seem so unhappily married. Well the truth is that part of the responsibility lies within the perception married people put out there. At some point we must all step back and ask ourselves…if marriage is so bad then why do so many people keep aspiring to it? There must be something to it after all! Like the couple I was with this weekend said…”there is no secret, it’s about LOVE and EFFORT!”
Culled from BMWK
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