When your fiancé cheated on you before the wedding, not once but twice, did you think that getting married would transform him into being faithful?
Listen, folks, having a wedding ceremony won’t change your partner into a better person or into someone else! This idea that reciting vows in front of your family, friends, and in the presence of God Almighty will make your relationship better is nothing but a fantasy.
If he or she was annoying, disrespectful, abusive, dishonest, and irresponsible before the wedding, they’ll be annoying, disrespectful, abusive, dishonest, and irresponsible after the wedding. What you see is what you get!
How many of you remember the old newspaper cartoon called “Love Is”? Each day there was a different expression of the word love. For example, Love is … never having to say I’m sorry! Or Love is … taking one day at a time. Get it? But the one “Love Is” cartoon that everyone needs to read is, Love is … acceptance.
If you’re seriously considering getting married or being in a committed relationship, you’d better cut and paste this on your wall. If you don’t accept a person for who they are, then that’s not love, that’s delusion! And so is the idea that loving someone hard enough will change them!
But the truth is you can’t change people just by loving them. Love may be a powerful thing but it’s not magic! You can’t just wave your overwhelming love over someone’s head, and they miraculously change into Mr. or Mrs. Right.
When you’re desperate to be married, many people will settle for a project instead of a partner. In their minds, if they could just fix one, or two, or maybe three things, that person would make the perfect half of a super couple. I call it the “Fix-A-Dude” or “Fix-A-Chick” syndrome.
We throw around the word “Love” too easily, and we give our love away too freely. People are so desperate to be happy that they are quick to jump at the word love, the emotions of love, the magic of love, just for the sake of escaping being alone!
We want to be happy now! And what’s the fastest and easiest way to find happiness, to fall in love, or to believe in love at first sight? We crave love because it gives us a high, like a drug … it’s a quick fix! We are programmed by Hollywood to be swept off our feet and live happily ever after.
Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not reality. Reality is waking up every day, paying bills, getting the kids off to school, doing homework, making mistakes, getting on each other’s nerves, compromising, fighting, making up, and getting up the next day and starting all over again.
And you do it with a person you love for who they are, not for what you secretly desire them to be. That’s what a real relationship is about. That doesn’t sound sexy, does it? And it sure as hell doesn’t sound easy!
Relationships are work. Strong relationships take time to build. Relationships are about being real about who you are and being happy with who your partner is as a person without conditions. And in relationships, you don’t always get your way; it’s called compromise, and it ain’t easy!
But I promise you this, if you go into it with your eyes open and remove the rose-colored glasses, you’ll have a much better chance at “happily ever after” or, at the very least, “peacefully ever after,” and what’s more valuable than that?
Michael Baisden
Excerpt from my book, Raise Your Hand If You Have Issues
