Relationship Rescue

How to Discuss Issues

Holiday 911

God Knows Marriage Isn't Always Easy

Courage to Love...When Your Marriage Hurts

How to Stay Married Without Going Crazy

Why Infidelity Happens

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

15 Hot Ideas for Phenomenal Physical Intimacy!

What Makes Marriage Work?

Making Marriage Work.

Ten Great Dates to Revitalize Your Marriage

52 Dates For You & Your Mate: Three Wishes Date

52 Dates For You & Your Mate: Honeymoon Memory Date

52 Dates For You & Your Mate: Showers, Bubble Bath, and Candles Date

52 Dates For You & Your Mate: Play-with-a-Pet Date

Divorce Hurts Children Of All Ages

Couples Don't Divorce, Families Divorce

For The Sake of The Kids

Is Divorce All Bad?

“Marriage: Why It’s So Hard”

Why do we get married? And we do marry and often. If one marriage doesn’t work, we marry again to someone different, this time hoping the previous selection process was the problem, not us and not the fundamental an inherent difficulty of marriage. When we do marry, we generally make this grandiose commitment propelled by and under the influence of our feelings: transient and fragile emotional states responsive to the weather, hormones, money, music and alcohol, among other stimuli. Most of us can’t say what we want for dinner but we promise our spouse we will want him or her forever. And we mean it when we say it. We’re under the spell of courtship, a magical interlude in which we view our beloved as perfect and we ourselves have never been so wonderful. People in the throes of courtship are blind, deaf, senseless, and unresponsive to the reality that lies just ahead. One of my long time patients, a stunningly beautiful woman, is currently single after a second divorce. While single these past five years, she has had a multitude of short-term relationships, relationships that seldom get past the courtship phase. She calls this “the bubble.” “Everything is wonderful right now, “ she reports, “we’re in the bubble.” And bubbles usually burst, as we all know. There are many people who cannot handle the reality of a relationship outside the protection of the courtship bubble and go from person to person, enjoying the excitement of novelty but not making it very long as courtship fades into relationship. You can imagine how they fare when relationship develops into marriage.

Recognition of our idealized love-object as human after, sets in about six to eight months later. It’s like we “sober” up. Most of us are subject to this unconscious and hormonally-driven hiatus from good judgement and should enjoy it to the fullest. But we probably shouldn’t marry until we’re safely through it and able to see the beloved without the idealized projections with which we have unconsciously covered them. This projecting process is why later in the throes of marriage we often feel and say, “You’re not who I married-you’ve changed.”

The truth is, the beloved who has been on his/her best behavior, probably has relaxed somewhat as you have. Often it’s the projections of idealized traits that we’ve supplied onto the partner that begin to fall off like clothes off a coat hanger with the passage of time and shared experiences that is the bigger culprit in the first disillusionment of marriage. My advice is, “Deal with it.” Your partner is real after all just as you are. The growing up begins.