Love and Marriage

I have been married more than once. OK, I have been married more than twice. It used to embarrass me to say that because I looked at that as two failures. I don't see it that way anymore. I see them as molding experiences. They helped mold me into the person I am today. I personally feel that love, as society defines it, is highly over rated--but hear me out. I think Hollywood has led us to believe that love is a feeling. I believe that love the feeling is a result of love the verb. Love the verb is something you DO, you make sacrifices for the other person, you give of yourself, you listen, you empathize, you affirm and most of all you respect and appreciate the other person. It is a constant give and take--it is ever changing. And it is a willingness to DO those things for someone else.

Because of my past molding experiences I have found my true Best Friend for Life. He is everything you would want in a best friend. I can talk to him about anything, I trust him, and I respect him. We don't always agree and we get angry with each other, but that is part of the growing process. We are both fiercly independent and sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes not so good. But we have learned to respect each other's independence and our relationship has grown because of that.

So, as my daughter approaches the marrying age, I wish for her what I have learned and I wish that she won't have to go through the molding experiences that I did. I wish for her to get it right the first time. Some of it comes with maturity and age. But I found that most of it comes from knowing yourself and being comfortable in your own skin. Not so much knowing what you want, because that changes, but knowing what you DON'T want, and that pretty much stays constant. Had I met my Best Friend for Life when I was twenty-something, would we have been a good fit then? Hmmmm.

I wanted to share the lyrics to a song I heard recently that sums this up much better than I could ever verbalize. My favorite part is the second verse. The song is called "For My Wedding"

For my wedding, I will dress in black
And never again will I look back
Ah, my dark angels we must part
For I've made a sanctuary of my heart

To want what I have
To take what I'm given with grace
For this I pray
On my wedding day

For my wedding, I don't want violins
Or sentinmental songs about
thick and thin
I wan t a momet of silence
and a moment of prayer
For the love we'll need to make it
in the world out there

I dream, and my dreams are all
glory and light
That's what I've wanted for my life
And if it hasn't always been that way
Well, I can dream and I can pray
On my wedding day

So what makes us any different
from all the others
Who have tried and failed before us
Maybe nothing, maybe nothing at all
But I pray we're the lucky ones;
I pray we never fall

I want what we have
To take what wer'e given with grace
For theses things I pray
On my wedding day....

Written by: Larry John McNally
Sung by: Don Henley

A man once told another man that his marriage was in trouble--he and his wife just didn't have the same feelings for each other anymore. He just didn't love her and she felt the same about him. The other man answered, : "Just love her. Listen to her, hear her, appreciate her and affirm her. If you are willing to do that, love the feeling will return"

To summarize all of my ramblings and to take the lyrics from another song "It's not the love that dies, it's the understanding ways"