A Healthy Marriage - What"s Being in Love Got to Do With It?
Not long ago I was walking around the local grocery store in a weary daze trying desperately to conjure up yet another variation on the rotisserie chicken theme--for about the two zillionth time in my life.
Believe me, after a few years of marriage, throwing another meal on the table night after night gets to be quite a challenge.
But so does married life, if you want to know the truth.
Where is the romance when you have to get up with the same irritable person with bed head and bad breath every morning of your life, while paying down credit card debt, digging the crabgrass out of the flowerbed, and helping someone to the toilet each time another nasty virus sends everyone running to cough up their guts? Not much! But that is real life, and it has nothing to do with what a lot of people seem to expect, and what we see on television every day.
Even so, it doesn't mean marriage has to be boring or at worst, an endurance contest.
As a marriage therapist, I've had to deal with unrealistic expectations of romance and marriage of my clients my entire working life.
I sit across from couples who once gazed sappily into each others eyes at the altar and promised "til' death do us part...
" and now they are about to kill each other, simply because they are bored, disenchanted, and expected life to be one long Hallmark movie.
And I'm supposed to save their marriage..
...
I don't mean to be a Scrooge about love, I really don't.
I do believe in the power of love-I do, I do.
If I didn't believe in romance, I wouldn't have devoted my life to marriage and family therapy, or stayed married to the same man my entire life.
I certainly wouldn't be writing books about it.
The problem is that we live in a culture that bombards us with myths about romance every day of our lives.
If I was an alien visiting from outer space and I watched an evening of television, I'd be convinced that the entire planet was obsessed with sex and romance.
Well...
uh...
we actually are, if we are honest with ourselves.
I sigh when I listen to the couples tell me they "just aren't in love anymore"...
and the twenty-something girls who believe that if they sleep with a man he will magically fall in love with them.
Then there are there those women and women who tell me they are in love with a person they have dated ONE time.
What, indeed, does that kind of love have to do with anything? Not much, because, in my book, that is not really love.
That kind of love and real love are two totally different experiences.
The kind of love they grieve for is actually very volatile, passionate, intense, and makes them feel wonderful about themselves, all the time.
It is certainly not boring.
Unfortunately, it is the kind we all crave, if we are honest with ourselves.
That kind of love doesn't satisfy for the long haul.
Granted, it makes you feel wonderful for a short while, like chocolate chip cookies.
But like my forays to the grocery store, real love ends up putting good solid food on the table, and it nourishes us instead of leaving us with "sugar blues.
" In fact, it is the kind of love that doesn't have too much to do with feelings at all, and has more to do with commitment, dependability, vows, faithfulness, and friendship more than with romance.
I'm sure you're saying: what does she know, she's been married to the same guy for forever and she probably doesn't have a clue how I feel.
She doesn't know how much in love I am! Well, excuse me but my husband was considered to be quite a hottie when I met him, and he still is, in his own sweet way.
Fortunately, I had the good sense to marry that guy, because he turned out to be a keeper.
But I'll admit, I wasn't stupid in love with love him, either.
What we had, and still do even after all these years, is more like a slow steady burn-it never was the dramatic sort of soap opera love that a lot of girls seem to prefer these days.
There really is truth in the notion that the "hotter the flame, the faster it burns out.
" Romance that initially seems very intense and passionate doesn't seem to last very long, at least according to the statistics.
There are a lot of reasons for this, most having to do with the biochemistry in our brain.
The chemicals produced by the brain during the "falling in love" phase of relationships are powerful pain inhibitors, and they create an incredible sense of well-being, confidence, and euphoria.
But that phase has an incredibly short shelf-life--about six months, to be exact.
Of course, romance does feel wonderful, and everyone probably needs to fall hard at least once in their life, just to get it out of their system.
Kind of like getting vaccinated against a deadly disease.
My theory is that sometimes getting a mild dose of a disease prevents it from killing you in the future.
But beware.
Once you fall that deep into an obsessive love, it is hard to get it "out of your system" and sometimes it even takes over your life.
The truth is, you may not actually be "in love" at all; you may just be in a disturbed state of mind that has more to do with mental illness than romance.
So, get smart girls and boys.
Quit chasing the love drug all the time, and start building real relationship and intimacy in your marriage.
It might be a bit boring, but I promise you, you'll have a better chance of lasting for the long haul.
Believe me, after a few years of marriage, throwing another meal on the table night after night gets to be quite a challenge.
But so does married life, if you want to know the truth.
Where is the romance when you have to get up with the same irritable person with bed head and bad breath every morning of your life, while paying down credit card debt, digging the crabgrass out of the flowerbed, and helping someone to the toilet each time another nasty virus sends everyone running to cough up their guts? Not much! But that is real life, and it has nothing to do with what a lot of people seem to expect, and what we see on television every day.
Even so, it doesn't mean marriage has to be boring or at worst, an endurance contest.
As a marriage therapist, I've had to deal with unrealistic expectations of romance and marriage of my clients my entire working life.
I sit across from couples who once gazed sappily into each others eyes at the altar and promised "til' death do us part...
" and now they are about to kill each other, simply because they are bored, disenchanted, and expected life to be one long Hallmark movie.
And I'm supposed to save their marriage..
...
I don't mean to be a Scrooge about love, I really don't.
I do believe in the power of love-I do, I do.
If I didn't believe in romance, I wouldn't have devoted my life to marriage and family therapy, or stayed married to the same man my entire life.
I certainly wouldn't be writing books about it.
The problem is that we live in a culture that bombards us with myths about romance every day of our lives.
If I was an alien visiting from outer space and I watched an evening of television, I'd be convinced that the entire planet was obsessed with sex and romance.
Well...
uh...
we actually are, if we are honest with ourselves.
I sigh when I listen to the couples tell me they "just aren't in love anymore"...
and the twenty-something girls who believe that if they sleep with a man he will magically fall in love with them.
Then there are there those women and women who tell me they are in love with a person they have dated ONE time.
What, indeed, does that kind of love have to do with anything? Not much, because, in my book, that is not really love.
That kind of love and real love are two totally different experiences.
The kind of love they grieve for is actually very volatile, passionate, intense, and makes them feel wonderful about themselves, all the time.
It is certainly not boring.
Unfortunately, it is the kind we all crave, if we are honest with ourselves.
That kind of love doesn't satisfy for the long haul.
Granted, it makes you feel wonderful for a short while, like chocolate chip cookies.
But like my forays to the grocery store, real love ends up putting good solid food on the table, and it nourishes us instead of leaving us with "sugar blues.
" In fact, it is the kind of love that doesn't have too much to do with feelings at all, and has more to do with commitment, dependability, vows, faithfulness, and friendship more than with romance.
I'm sure you're saying: what does she know, she's been married to the same guy for forever and she probably doesn't have a clue how I feel.
She doesn't know how much in love I am! Well, excuse me but my husband was considered to be quite a hottie when I met him, and he still is, in his own sweet way.
Fortunately, I had the good sense to marry that guy, because he turned out to be a keeper.
But I'll admit, I wasn't stupid in love with love him, either.
What we had, and still do even after all these years, is more like a slow steady burn-it never was the dramatic sort of soap opera love that a lot of girls seem to prefer these days.
There really is truth in the notion that the "hotter the flame, the faster it burns out.
" Romance that initially seems very intense and passionate doesn't seem to last very long, at least according to the statistics.
There are a lot of reasons for this, most having to do with the biochemistry in our brain.
The chemicals produced by the brain during the "falling in love" phase of relationships are powerful pain inhibitors, and they create an incredible sense of well-being, confidence, and euphoria.
But that phase has an incredibly short shelf-life--about six months, to be exact.
Of course, romance does feel wonderful, and everyone probably needs to fall hard at least once in their life, just to get it out of their system.
Kind of like getting vaccinated against a deadly disease.
My theory is that sometimes getting a mild dose of a disease prevents it from killing you in the future.
But beware.
Once you fall that deep into an obsessive love, it is hard to get it "out of your system" and sometimes it even takes over your life.
The truth is, you may not actually be "in love" at all; you may just be in a disturbed state of mind that has more to do with mental illness than romance.
So, get smart girls and boys.
Quit chasing the love drug all the time, and start building real relationship and intimacy in your marriage.
It might be a bit boring, but I promise you, you'll have a better chance of lasting for the long haul.
