Love the bad = happy marriage
So many people believe that falling in love means loving all the positive. Too many people forget the negative.
Yet, that negative is what drives our divorce rates higher and higher. I am raising my children to look for the negative
in the people they meet.
Seems a little harsh, but let me explain more. Everybody has good and bad parts to them. I think finding the good side is pretty easy. You can spend enough time with anyone and you will eventually love (care for, have some positive feelings) in some way that person. I believe that time is a key to our feelings. So essentially we can love almost anyone given enough time.
So now to the negative. I am on my second marriage. The first time I married the first man to come along and say I love you! The second time I took my time. I looked at all of the aspects of this man. I felt tricked the first time around and I didn’t want that again. I decided love was the easy part and I needed to know what the negatives to this man were.
I took a year to look hard at all that was bad about him. I found some issues that were fairly serious. Could he change them? Would he? Should he? I couldn’t wrap my mind around all the questions this brought up with the man that I “loved”. I then realized that him changing could not be a condition to my love for him. You cannot expect someone to change for you. People will only change if they want to.
I then asked myself the questions. The most important one was….Could I live with his flaws? The things that were serious could change over time, but I had no right to expect them to get better. They were a part of him as much as the things that made him amazing. I know I had some serious issues myself. Everyone does. Those serious issues can lead to serious problems later on in the relationship.
Here is a small issue but it shows a smaller scale of what I mean: You are a slob, your spouse is a neat freak, these are fairly serious issues for some they are really serious. So they marry each other even though they are both semi irritated with these flaws. Over time neat freak gets tired of cleaning up after the slob or the slob is tired of all their stuff being moved; fights start to happen more and more often.
The flaw above could have ended a marriage in no time. But it seems like it would be something that would have been noticed early on. To many people think that they can just take it, the person will change over time. Well the truth is they MAY or MAY NOT! You can’t make someone change. That old saying “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” is so true.
Yes, break ups hurt, but the more time in a relationship the deeper the hurt. Why drag out something that is challenged anyway. Now the same example above could be a true slob at heart while the neat freak isn’t completely OCD about it. Then the relationship can work.
So as you look at your loved one and try to decide if marriage is in your future, look for the negative in that person. Can you handle to always live with the negative side your mate has? Can they live with yours?
