Thanks to my dear friend Kim (check her out, over at her blog HERE!), and her incredible social media and Communications Major skills, I'm always benefiting from the things she finds and posts.
This morning it was a bit of 'food for thought' on marriage and the breaking of the 'Happily Ever After' myth.
If your married, engaged, in a relationship, or completely and totally single - you should read this.
I loved the frank honesty and down to earth attitude Sheryl Paul uses in this article - because let's face it, we live in a world that likes to sugar coat everything, and is so afraid to be real in efforts not to hurt anyone's feelings.
Seriously? Since when did we all become little babies that can't handle things that are difficult?!
I understand we have all grown up with the ideal 'happily ever after' shoved down our throats since we could blink, but there comes a time when you need to separate fictitious fairytales from true life reality, and I feel like being able to consciously realize marriage is not a fairytale, in any circumstances, is a skill that is becoming extremely rare.
I admit, I had to learn this hard lesson myself.
I was a major believer in the myth. Especially being such a die-hard romantic!
So I had to learn this lesson when my husband and I were engaged, because I take marriage extremely seriously, and always knew that whenever I decided to get married, I'd be in it for the long haul.
I had to really sit down with myself and give myself a huge reality check... Especially marrying a Marine, whose job has to come first! I mean, what is that?! That's not exactly the picture perfect, "riding off into the sunset" ideal I had imagined - especially with all the holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and other special days he would have to miss being deployed all the dang time!
But forcing myself to separate the fiction from the reality was extremely freeing.
There was no longer any pressure to make the man I love into something he's not - into something society or fictional stories want men to be.
He's human. He makes mistakes, and sometimes he bugs the crap out of me (and I do the same)
- but after accepting the fact that he's not perfect, it let me appreciate him for all he is, and just how great a guy he is- in the real world.
And although he may not be perfect - I learned he's perfect for me.
So please do yourself, your marriage, and your happiness a favor and force yourself to take this lesson to heart.
Because honestly, there are way too many divorce EXCUSES these days, and many divorcees (like J.Lo) look at themselves like the victim and not the problem. Which, to put it harshly, simply isn't the case.
In my experience, a happy marriage is: compromise, communication, investing in each other, and always trying to perfect the balance between giving and taking.
My husband and I are not perfect, and we don't have a "textbook perfect" marriage
-but we are so happy because we apologize, and forgive, and never forget what's truly important in the grand scale of things.
Life isn't about being happy for a single moment, it's about being happy for a lifetime.
Thanks for the shout-out girl! I loved this article as well. It was definitely something that I needed to read because living the military lifestyle, it's really difficult to maintain that "honeymoon period." I honestly don't think that my husband and I have ever had that because of our military lifestyle. There are so many points when you have to stop and realize that this isn't always going to be easy and you can't just trust in "love" to get you through. Sometimes you have to focus on your vows and the blatant fact that this gets difficult and something worth having was never going to be easy to come by. Growing up with romantic ideologies has probably made this all the more difficult, as you mentioned in the post. It doesn't help to have celebrities like JLo say that she's holding for a fairytale. I feel like she probably had a realistic and happy marriage with Marc Anthony but like the author said, she needed to realize that she needs to put just as much hard work in as anyone else.
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