SPIRIT: SKILLS AND PERSPECTIVES FOR INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS IN TRUTH

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO “HAPPILY EVER AFTER?”

by Mikal Frazier, LMFT, LPC

“And they lived happily ever after” is one of the most tragic sentences in literature. It’s tragic because it’s a falsehood. It is a myth that has led generations to expect something from marriage that is not possible.” Joshua Lievman

I have been married 32 years, have attended quite a few weddings and still, when I see a bride trying on a wedding dress or having pictures made in the countryside, my gaze lingers a while. In the ambiance of that scene there is such wonder and the expectation of fulfilled joy.

A friend once said, “Everyone loves romance.” We love romance because it has the expectation of satisfying fully. We convince ourselves in those days of courting that we will have the ideal relationship in which we will feel content, passionate, peaceful and totally adored FOREVER. Historian Karen Lystra has explored the history of romantic love. She informs us that romantic love was not always a prerequisite for marriage. In the early 1800′s romantic love moved to the forefront of significance. As this happened, Lystra says, “romantic love contributed to the displacement of God by the lover as the central symbol of ultimate significance.”

Romantic love displaced God because we believed romantic love would fulfill all of the desires mentioned above. We are each seeking wholeness and at some level we believe romantic love will supply that wholeness, but that will never happen.

What I always want my clients to understand is that they must grieve the loss of the dream. The dream is not here. Christian counselor and author Larry Crabb identifies this desire for the dream in his book Inside Out. He explains that we were created to live in a perfect world with a perfect relationship with the Father and perfect relationships with one another. We lost that perfect bliss in the garden. We will never have it here. Never finding that completeness leaves us with an ache in our soul, an ache we believe will be satisfied in marriage.

Nature also plays a part in this ecstatic euphoria we call falling in love. The February 15, 1993, issue of Time Magazine has a great article on the chemical response creating the feelings of romantic passion. The science that identified these chemicals also explains that the body cannot continue at such a pace, and after two to three years, these chemicals are no longer effective. But we are not abandoned without any support. Chemicals which produce feelings of peace and calm move to action.

Therefore, our disappointment has an emotional, a spiritual and a physical basis. And this disappointment is inevitable. It is this disappointment which provides the energy to do something different. If the something different takes a positive path, it will be a path which brings the couple to a more mature love, a less selfish love, a love out of our fullness rather than our emptiness. It is in this something different that we learn to turn to God to fill us up, to soothe us and to validate us. To expect our spouse to do that for us is unfair.

This is an essential perspective for the contented and mature marriage. This is why family therapist David Schnarch can say, “Stay in that marriage, that is where you grow up.”

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PERCEPTIONS

RESPECT FOR THE COLOR RED

by Joel Mark Solliday.

What do you think of when someone says’s “red” or you see the color red? Joel Solliday is minister for the Westside Church of Christ in New Haven, Connecticut. In this Perception article he helps us to think about what “red” should signal in our lives, especially “red traffic lights.” You will certainly be challenged to “stop” and think about some of his thoughts the next time that you see a red traffic light. You can read his timely ideas

at

<http://www.allaboutfamilies.org/sh/percep200029.html>

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