Life Partners?

How do you choose a life partner? You don't. Anyone who suggests you can select a good mate by avoiding selfish, irrational, or needy parters is at best oversimplifying and at worst lying. The closest I can come isn't even a formula.  Happiness in life partnerships and marriage flows from a balance of having an idea in mind, working as hard as you can to achieve that goal, finding joy while you work on that goal, and realizing complete satisfaction whether it turned out as imagined or completely different.

Happiness in marriage demands more than loving the person, you have to love the relationship. My experience suggests that it is easier to fall in love with someone than it is to fall in love with marriage. I didn't always love marriage and that is why I dated. That process of dating led me to to an emotional place that cemented my conviction in the purpose and benefits of marriage.

One key factor in my willingness to get married was based in my own conviction that marriage itself was good and necessary. I love my wife. I also love marriage. I was ready to wed once I realized that my now wife held values that coincided with mine and her commitment to marriage reinforced my own. We were both willing to accept permanent and everlasting covenants and vows.

During our courtship and on our wedding day, like almost every other husband, I would have told you that I married the perfect woman. And I was right. But why? The fact we are married almost 23 years later doesn't prove anything. While it is true that my commitment, her commitment and our commitment when we got married was enduring I am convinced that many of our now-divorced friends had the same commitment. They had made the same vows we had. So why the different outcomes? Were we wiser? Is my wife just smarter and more clever? Well that one is true but not the point.

Newlyweds don't choose life partners they choose partners. One does not choose a life partner by making one correct decision and marrying the right person. Life partners are those who actively choose that same partner every day. A wedding day lacks sufficient evidence to honor a lifelong partnership. That status we celebrate in retrospect once earned. We will earn that celebration through the choices we make today. Even after 23 years, my wife or I could make any number of choices that would end our relationship. Would those choices, in any logical sense, justify a conclusion that one of us made a poor choice 23 years ago? Absolutely not.

I am grateful for my wife and all of her choices. While I can be selfish, irrational and needy our love for each other and our love for marriage suggest that we just might make it as life partners. That is for a future history to decide. As for today I will choose her all over again.

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