It’s All About the Journey

by Eric Payne

It’s very easy for husbands and wives to get sidelined by the plans they make. You know the plans I’m talking about — getting that first (or another) home, having a baby, relocating — the life altering ones. We in the married lane have to be very careful to make sure the destination doesn’t become more important than the journey. Don’t covet it. Even though the destination is the goal — the reason for the journey in the first place, couples can sometimes get so caught up in the pursuit that one or both loses sight of the other. Instead of arriving at your destination as one — beautiful and thriving, you show up broken and fractured, possibly angry and resentful towards your loved one. From there, the forces that are designed to break up marriages, usually addressed and dismissed when thriving, gain strength and get really bad, quickly. It’s all those little things that used to go unnoticed. Now everything is a problem. As the old saying goes, “The Devil is in the details.” Don’t give him a reason to get into them.

The easiest way to avoid and/or manage this is for spouses to:

• keep the lines of communication open
• cling to patience
• remember that when things go wrong along the journey, even when your spouse is wrong, he or she is not your enemy. Turning on the one you love is like cutting off your own hand, or worse, stabbing yourself in the heart.

If you are reading this and you’ve already crossed the line with your husband or wife all hope isn’t lost. Apologize as quickly as possible to prevent the seeds of discontent from taking root. And depending on the circumstances, whether you know you’ve crossed the line or not, do your best to be open to correction and even constructive criticism from the one you love. Besides being the right thing to do, it just happens to be one of the things you signed up for when you said, “I do.”

In the end what’s more important, that thing you can reach out and touch because it’s so close, or the health and well being of your relationship with your spouse?

Check Eric out at MakesMeWannaHoller.com where he tackles family and fatherhood one day at a time.

About the author

Lamar and Ronnie Tyler are the creators of the award-winning blog BlackandMarriedWithKids.com . They also are behind the Amazon.com bestselling DVDs Happily Ever After: A Positive Image of Black Marriage, You Saved Me and Men Ain’t Boys that explores manhood in the African American community. The Tylers are also the proud parents of four children.

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