A friend told me the other day, isn’t it funny when you’re with someone for too long, you forget to see their good qualities? The things that attracted you in the first place are still there, but you forget about the sweet little things that meant so much at the beginning of the relationship. For example, leave notes around the house or on the windshield of the car, also cards and flowers. Compliments when you dress nicely or cook a nice dinner were also part of the early relationship. I think we’ve all said this: “Hurry up, we’re going to be late. You look good, come on!”
One of the things I remember most is the last six years of my wife’s battle with cancer. I seem to focus on other couples and their relationships. When you are in the midst of a trauma or a crisis, your perspective on life will change and you will have different points of view on many things. For some reason, all those other couples seem to stick with me. One night my wife and I went out with eight or ten other couples from our church, all married. I was always close to my wife, never knowing when her last day would be. All the women were sitting around talking about their husbands in a negative way. To me they all seemed respectful, spiritual and responsible men. But what I heard was about his faults, mistakes, and other character flaws. I wanted to speak up and say, give those guys a break and show them love and respect. I am not judging because we are not all perfect. We should all take life one day at a time and love each other like it’s our last.
I always told people that before couples go to counseling, they should go into individual counseling for a few months. For the simple reason of seeing if they love themselves. Then they should sit down with their therapist and his partner to work things out.
I will end by taking a paragraph from the book The Good Marriage by Judith S. Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee….
Many couples seem to think that just as they can’t slow down the human aging process, they can’t do anything to alter the aging process in their marriage. They let the relationship take its “natural course” by chance until it threatens to break up, by which time it may be too late.