LESSON THREE: DIGGING DEEP FOR LOVE

It’s important to note that in most marriages, doubts about the marriage, uncertainty about where you’re headed together, highs of intimacy and lows of loneliness are all quite common. After reading that last sentence, marriage can look a bit dire. But if we stop there, we miss the opportunity for our marriage and ourselves to feel deeply connected, safe, secure, and so completely loved. 

As individuals, we crave belonging, true, wholehearted belonging in which all the pieces and parts of us are accepted. Yet, if we don’t accept the darkness and work on our shadows, only trying to cast away and ignore these pieces of ourselves, we end up also unable to accept others for their whole selves as well. This doesn’t just apply to you, this applies to your spouse as well. 

It’s pretty likely (because most of us do this) that you and your spouse both feel hurt, sadness and disconnection. There are differences in depths and intensities of these things and we often have two different ideas and realities about exactly how hurt, how sad and how disconnected each of us feel. But emotion is universal. We all have feelings. 

Is what you’ve been feeling, keeping you from loving your partner in the ways you’d really like to be able to love him or him? Does your hurt, your aches of disconnection, your annoyances about him or her make you feel like you want to avoid them or at the least stay neutral and not move toward? Likely so. 

As humans we're really good at making a case for ourselves as to why we do what we do. We can justify our actions like nobody’s business and convince ourselves that we have to do this, this way because he or she does or doesn’t (fill in the blank). Our egos are magnificent! And they’re so smart. They make us feel “better than” and therefore we get to have different rules.

But is this true and better yet, is it helpful for your relationship to carry the “better than” shield? Think about how your ego plays a role in your marriage. Ego disguises itself as love, but love isn’t ego. Love is acceptance. Are you in a space where you’re unable to accept your partner?