Decisional forgiveness is really only a surface-level kind of forgiveness. Emotional forgiveness is much harder to achieve.
Every vendor she finds—from the florist to the caterer to the DJ—you take issue with. You look up Yelp reviews, taking a screenshot of the negative ones. You tell her disaster stories of others who tried to have their weddings at that venue. You don’t know why you’re doing this. It’s not like she’s going to cancel the wedding because she can’t find a florist just yet. But you feel like, in your way, you’re protesting the wedding by being negative about the vendors.
To not get married because you’re afraid of losing your partner one day is to make a teeny tiny dent in the inevitable part of human existence called pain.
You know your friend. If this is a childhood buddy, then you know her family history, her traumas, and her insecurities. You know when she is reacting to a relationship problem and when she’s just had a personal problem triggered. Keep all of that in mind.
You’ve given up on pet names, sweet tones, playful teasing, or any type of language that softens up talk about things like laundry and grocery shopping. If someone were to hear you talk to each other, they’d believe you were just roommates.
The empty nest may come at the same time as middle age (which is a terribly perfect storm) or, if you’re lucky, will come after you’ve gotten through the middle age dilemma, and are stronger for it. That doesn’t mean that having an empty nest isn’t difficult. It’s just you, and your partner again—plus the realization that so much of your identities and schedules were tied to raising children.
You try to hide the fact that your partner has different political views from your friends. They tend to share your views and, well, they rather openly talk about how much they hate his political party.
When you tell them how happy you are with your partner, and how much fun you have together, they give you a passive aggressive comment like, “That’s nice—but having fun isn’t everything in life.”
If your partner wants to be swingers or wants an open relationship and you don’t, the marriage simply cannot go on. When your ideas of fidelity are different, there cannot be trust.
Fans of the movie “My Best Friend’s Wedding” are very familiar with the old, “If we’re both single by this age, let’s get married” pact. But for the younger readers who didn’t see this (classic!) film, this pact involves two platonic friends who agree to marry each other if they haven’t found anyone else to […]
Marriage means different things to different people. Some individuals get married because, in their eyes, it allows to them make further commitments like living together, joining bank accounts and having children. Meanwhile, many couples already do all of those things before tying the knot today, and getting married just gives them a long-awaited chance to […]
It’s very rare that a marriage goes from perfect to failing overnight. Those stories in which a woman finds out her husband is a secret polygamist or laundering money are few and far between—that’s why they make for great true crime show episodes. But in real life, marriages end because one type of argument (that […]