I saw a post on Facebook today that
said, “Every woman deserves a man who looks at her everyday like it’s the first
time he saw her…” Now, first let me preface my thoughts that I am about to
share with the assurance that I am not cynical or bitter, or unhappily married. I
have simply been married for going on seven years now while simultaneously
working on a counseling degree (including a marriage counseling certification
course) and have learned a few things along the way. I see this type of post
all the time, and I have to be honest, they bother me. Don’t get me wrong, they
are incredibly sweet in sentiment, and what girl wouldn’t love to have a man look at her that way? The problem I have
with it is that when we go into marriage with the expectation that this is what
it is supposed to be like forever, we
are setting ourselves up for discontentment and our husbands up for failure. I
know this, because I am guilty of it myself.
When my husband and I finally started dating (those of you who
know me and our story know it was a long
road…lol) it was amazing and wildly romantic and spontaneous. It was the stuff
you see in movies. *sigh* And I thought, “This is it! This is what I’ve been waiting
for my whole life, and this is what it feels like when you find the right
person…the one you were meant to find!” I knew the stories. The “old wives
tales” I called them, that the “honeymoon” stage of sunshine and rainbows wouldn’t
last forever, that we would have days that we couldn’t stand one another even,
but I thought “Us? No….WE will be
different!” I simply could not foresee my husband ever not looking at me with those puppy dog eyes so full of love or
jumping at the chance to fulfill my every desire…(okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a
little but you get the picture.) So when real life began to set in eventually,
and the “new” of our relationship began to wear off I was terribly discontent.
To say I was blind sighted would be an understatement. I am ashamed to say that
I moped around for years before I
finally figured out that my unrealistic expectations were a very big part of
the problem, and the only person that could fix that was me! All this time I
was looking to my husband to somehow find a way to make me happy and I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to realize that
making me happy just wasn’t his job or even within his ability. I am the only
one that can control that. I can choose to be happy no matter my circumstances.
My husband is not perfect, and once I stopped expecting him to be our marriage
got a whole lot better. It’s almost like
I could actually hear him take a deep
breath of relief!
I began to look at myself at this
point and wonder what it was like for him to be married to me…what a thought,
huh? I can be terribly pushy and opinionated and I can attempt to control a
situation like nobody’s business! I always got angry with him for not
communicating, but to be honest, I don’t think I would want to communicate with
me either sometimes! I can be pretty scary! So instead of focusing on my husband’s
faults and what he should or should not be doing to fit this mold of what I
thought the perfect husband or the perfect marriage should be, I decided to
start working on myself, because I am far
from the perfect wife, and the only things
that are within my control are my own thoughts, beliefs, and behavior.
