Life is an interesting journey. It seems the older we get the more twists and turns come along. For many of us finding a partner, a mate, has been our main agenda. In our younger years we assumed we would grow up and meet a wonderful mate, get married and live happily ever after!  What has happened?

As we all know from the divorce rate, marriages are not doing well.  Couples, weather married or not, are having trouble staying together through the many challenges life brings into their relationships. The story we always imagined for ourselves isn’t reading the way we would like it to.

What is going on?  While there is not enough room in this article for me to address all aspects of this, I will touch on a few.  I often say to clients that the two greatest things we do in life is be a partner and/or parent yet there is no training required for either. That is amazing! The only training we usually have is from our family of origins and our past love relationships.  I strongly feel one of the best things we can do for marriages is to become healthier ourselves prior to getting married.

So what about the rest of us who are already married, divorced and possibly remarried? It’s never too late.  Often you need to start with yourself.  Its easy to become very discouraged and negative with our mates.  While many of your complaints may be valid, the only person you have control over is you.  Check out your expectations.  What are they?  Where did they come from?  Are they realistic?  Often we have many of our own unmet needs. Maybe you never felt loved as a child.  Maybe you never felt you were good enough for one of your parents?  Consciously or unconsciously we often seek our partners to fill our voids.  Often they do initially, but fall short down the line.  Address the parts that are about you.  When you feel you have made some headway on those areas seek some professional help, preferable with your partner, but if not, come alone.  The following reading is a wonderful example of my view of a healthy relationship.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love;
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone thought they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each others keeping.
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart.
And the oak tree and the cypress grown not in each other’s shadow.
                                                  - from "The Prophet"
                                                       by Kahlil Gibran