Hardest Parts of Marriage (Volume 3): Ch-ch-ch-changes

Day 121 (Written Wednesday April 11) ~ When I married Jade she was a 19 year old girl. She wasn’t a mother or a Christian and her sisters were in elementary school. Nearly 19 years later, she is a very different person. So am I by the way (for crying out loud I was an alcoholic then and I’m a preacher now!). Although all of these changes fall into the category of inevitable or better, they are still changes. Along about these times people are known to use expressions like, “I just don’t love you anymore...I don’t know you who are anymore...We’ve drifted apart.” If you are married to a person long enough, you will change, they will change and you better be able to adapt if you want your relationship to endure. So how do you deal with inevitable change without changing your marital status? Focus on things that don’t change. When you married you made a commitment. You took a vow to love, honor, cherish till death do you part. That can never change. Love is not influenced by circumstances because it is about commitment. Is your commitment to love them only skin deep? They are going to change physically. Will you only love them if they are skinny, if they have hair, if their hair isn’t gray, if they have all of their teeth? At some point your spouse will become a mother/father, eventually a grandparent, a retiree, a person without parents, disabled. What then? There is another way to view change, a positive way. Change prevents boredom and complacency. If you want to maintain the excitement of your early days in the relationship, you will have to commit to doing the same things you did back then. Pursue your partner. Seek to impress them. Do everything you can to make them fall in love with you. Communicate, listen and learn what is going on inside their mind. And if you’re someone who’s not good with change, well, it’s time you changed that.