Getting Through that First Year of Marriage - Part 2

One issue that is so often misunderstood is the concept of loving your spouse unconditionally. Every couple enters into their marriage commitment wanting and willing to give 100% to their relationship.  With that commitment comes the desire to love each other unconditionally. But because many couples enters into “unconditional love” with one or two faulty views, loving unconditionally in their married relationship actually becomes destructive to their relationship. Those two faulty and unhealthy views are:

1.    Unconditionally love the your spouse by doing whatever you can to make your spouse happy and avoid anything that makes your spouse unhappy (even if it makes you unhappy).

OR…

2.    Unconditionally love for yourself by doing whatever you can to make yourself happy and avoid anything that makes yourself unhappy (even if it makes your spouse unhappy).

The first misconception is wrong because it does not take your own feelings into account, and the second misconception is wrong because it does not take your spouse's feelings into account.

The healthier approach to loving your spouse unconditionally is for both of you to take the feelings of each other into account simultaneously. The more productive approach in loving unconditionally within a married relationship would be to: Do whatever you can to make you and your spouse happy at the same time, and avoid anything that will make either you or your spouse unhappy.

This is a healthy compromise between the two unhealthier approaches because it recognizes that the feelings of both spouses are important and should be accommodated simultaneously in marriage.

Incidentally, the problem you may be having with scheduling time together for dates, as discussed in “Getting Through that First Year of Marriage – Part 1”, may be a reflection of the fact that you are not following the healthier understanding of loving unconditionally. Right now, as you are scheduling regular date time with each other, you may be discovering that when one of you wants to do something badly enough, the other simply allows it to happen without any objection.

If this continues on a regular basis, you will find out very quickly that this only leads to a slow and subtle drifting apart!  Eventually you both will wake up and discover that you are strangers living under the same roof, living separate lives and doing your own thing…and those scheduled dates have virtually stopped!

Don't let that happen!  Develop as a couple a healthy understanding of what it means to love your spouse unconditionally, and keep following it for the rest of your married lives.  If you do, you will be more in love with each other in your Golden Years than you are right now!

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