Your Prince or Princess
From the time children watch their first animated movie with a prince and a princess, they begin forming ideas of what love and romance looks like. Girls think that someday a knight in shining armor riding a white horse will come for her, and his unfaltering devotion will make her happy for the rest of her life. Guys think that someday he will rescue a damsel in distress, and her unparalleled beauty and passion will make him the happiest man on earth. Little do they know that real life dosen’t turn out that way.
Couples tend to forget that they each are married to a real human being, and all honeymoon stages ultimately have to face reality. If marriage is going to experience real joy and bliss, they will have to release their childhood fantasies and embrace reality.
Love does not have to end when the honeymoon is over. Marriage is an incredible creation of God that is designed to provide some of the most amazing experiences that a human can have. If people are willing to get out of the storybooks and into the real world, they can find lasting, fulfilling, and even intoxicating love.
Failure to find happiness and be happy is really a personal problem. If you expect to be happy sometimes it means you still have some growing up to do.
Focusing on your love life will mean you need to see the importance of recognizing your attitude, and how it can put an intolerably heavy burden on your marriage. If your attitude says “my spouse should make me happy,” means, you think that if your spouse is sufficiently loving, caring, passionate, dependable, strong, and brave, then you will be a happy person in a happy marriage.
The converse of that idea is: my spouse is the reason I am not happy. By this thinking, your partner is either not providing the good things you need or is providing toxic things you don’t need or want. Therefore you are not happy.
Many couples will not actually express the first fantasy, but they will admit the second one. We will now validate the profound effects spouses do have on one another. Since marriage is the most intimate of relationships, spouses have the power and influence to bring joy, love, and encouragement to each other. The same is true about pain, hurt, and disappointment. SPOUSES DO AFFECT EACH OTHER, IN BIG WAYS, FOR GOOD OR FOR ILL.
Saying your spouse affects you, is a very different thing from saying that your spouse can, or should make you a happy person. That task and responsibility is for you, and only you, to achieve. You can have the best spouse in the world and still be a totally miserable person. THE TRUTH IS THAT YOUR HAPPINESS IS YOUR PROBLEM, AND IT IS ALSO YOUR OPPORTUNITY (My input with Rescue Your Love Life, p. 18-19).
Sherry