by Edward C. Lee
Any good love story begins with, “Once upon a time” and ends with “…and they lived happily ever after.” But what about when our real life relationships neither start nor end like a fairytale?
I pose the question, because I recently had dinner with a friend of mine that is going through a divorce, after more than 15 years of marriage. Pretty sad turn of events. But the most interesting thing is that for 15 years the issue (at least in their opinion) has been something that happened when they were engaged – more than 15 years ago. After hearing his side of the story for several hours over dinner, I began wondering why they could never leave what happened years ago. I mean, this is not a case of infidelity or abuse, just a “difference of approach” where things could have been handled a little differently. In most relationships it would have amounted to no more than a one time conversation, and it would have been settled.
Just like it was for my friend’s marriage, I think many marriages get off to a less than storybook start. Life just does not always provide us the clean tidy story line that we envision. Some relationships start out with a child out of wedlock or as the result of an affair (check out the biblical marriage of David and Bathsheba). Or perhaps shortly after the wedding a huge lie or misrepresentation is revealed. There are any number of things that can occur right at the start of a relationship that if not squashed can linger deep into the relationship but the question remains, how do you get it right when things start off all wrong?
A few thoughts come to mind here. The first is to, truly, honestly, talk about it – get it out. The only way an issue gets to hang around for 15 years is that it has not been sufficiently exposed and dealt with. Some wounds don’t come with statute of limitations, the passage of time does nothing to diminish their sting. And what I am learning is that no one has the right to determine what is a major issue for someone else. So even if you don’t agree with the severity of the situation, if it is important to your spouse then it should be important to you.
Secondly, coinciding with talking it out, is to arrive at why “it” won’t leave you alone. Why is it that is bothers you so much that your spouse told you a lie? Or, what is it about a spouse that is always late that just won’t allow you to move on? I remember when my wife and I started dating I used to joke with my wife about certain things that to me were just funny. But after a few throwdowns we both realized that what was funny and silly to me was a trigger to painful comments she used to hear as a child. I had no idea, but once we were able to hash it out, I learned to table jokes about certain topics.
Thirdly, learn the issue. You have heard the saying, “Knowledge is power.” Knowing what we are dealing with gives us strength and perspective to thrive while going through it. I once had a psychiatrist friend explain it to me like this. If your spouse had a physical ailment like diabetes, the doctor would sit you down and explain how to be a support system. Unfortunately, in many marriages we are married to a spouse (or they are married to us) and we don’t know how to be a support system for whatever keeps past issues in the present. Going back to the example from my own marriage; for years, I would say something and my wife would just get mad, but neither or us knew why. As we learned each other in ways that we could not learn when we were dating we both became enlightened and were able to bury the anger. I also learned that self-diagnosis is often misdiagnosis. Many times we filter and make determinations about our spouse based on our own experiences. But the best way to find out what is really bothering your husband or wife is to ask them.
Getting to solutions is really a labor of love. But by putting what happened in the dating or early days of your relationship on the front page you really have a chance to get it behind you and live looking forward rather than backward.
BMWK family, how have you put a less than storybook beginning behind you in your relationship?
Edward is an ordained minister, host of the blog: elevateyourmarriage.com and author of two first of their kind marriage books, Husbands, Wives, God: Introducing the Marriages of the Bible to Your Marriage and his new book, Husbands, Wives, God – Weekly Devotions: 52 Weeks of Relationship Enriching Devotions. Follow Edward on his blog or on Facebook at Husbands, Wives, God.