Hard Lesson

So I thought when I got married 17 years ago that love would be enough to sustain us. Over the years I found that isn’t true, afterall, I’d see people who said they loved each other but still ended up in divorce or separated. There were people that I would see that said they still loved each other, but yet somehow they couldn’t make their marriage work. What was missing? Was it the fact that they didn’t include God in their decision to get married in the first place? Was it that they had lost mutual respect for each other? Was it that they never knew how to really listen? Was it financial difficulties? Was it a death? Was it the loss of a child? What was it that led them to the road and a decision that they could no longer reside together or coexist together? What disrupted their “happy” home? Was there or is there a way they could come to a conclusion, a happy medium, some kind of compromise? I am now asking myself those same questions. When does love stop? Or does it ever? I thought love was forever. But what else is needed to make a marriage work? Maybe it’s mutual respect or maybe it’s understanding of the other person’s needs and want. When one makes a mistake in a marriage, they must own up to it. Assigning blame and having misplaced anger is not productive and it causes deterioration within the marriage. One cannot glorify one’s bad behavior in the eyes of the other spouse and expect the spouse to except everything. If your spouse says something you did or said hurt their feelings, validate their feelings, don’t pacify them. If your spouse asks you not to do something because it hurts their feelings, then stop doing it, if you need help, then seek help. Don’t ever tell your spouse it didn’t hurt their feelings because it’s not what you intended. Never say angry words when you’re angry, because those words will play like instant replay over and over and over again in their heads. Never do things to intentionally hurt your spouse because then they will begin to question your love. Love alone doesn’t sustain a marriage; there is respect, consideration, understanding, wisdom, knowledge. Never expect your spouse to carry the load of your burdens, they are your burdens not your spouse’s. Never expect your spouse to be responsible for your spiritual growth; they are only responsible for their own. Marriage is God’s ordained institution and if you are not ready, then don’t enter into it and defy the sanctity of it.