How Sweet It Is By Dr. Juan Harrison
How Sweet It Is
No secret that the divorce rate out there hovers around fifty percent with couples over 50 seeing a rise in their breakups. Knowing the selfish nature of most people, it’s probably surprising that there aren’t more. I once told a friend whose wife had stashed some money and left him with the kids and didn’t return that you can’t be in love by yourself.
Simply put, most marriages lasting 40-50 -60 years did so because there was a whole lot of selflessness built into them. Ideally, both partners were thoughtful and kind most of the time. In other cases the marriage only survived because one partner was willing to give in and give up a lot of their druthers to let the other more selfish partner have their way. I’ve told you about a widow lady and friend who told my wife that her late husband was the most selfish person she knew. She lived with that arrangement while the outside world never got a good look at what she was dealing with.
For the rest of us jaybirds who have managed to beat the odds with our half century of matrimony, we might want to take a bow or say a word of thanks. A lot of stuff that happens to us in relationships is not love. Somebody may love you, but what they might do or say to you couldn’t begin to approach anything resembling love. Anything mean and hateful and selfish is not love. It didn’t come from God. Take a guess what other force in the universe is trying to make your life miserable.
Hopefully, most of us old geezers have been able to say that our marital relationships have been fairly beneficial to both partners. God designed it to be a mutual admiration society that would bring out the best in both of you. Sometimes it seemed like we tended to bring out the worst in each other. Divorce we didn’t consider; murder, we did! Thank goodness for mercy on those tough occasions.
Fortunate partners who have been blessed to find a happy medium in their marriages know how good it feels to know there’s another human being that cares more about them than themselves. Actually, you can just about reach a sweet point in marriage where you do feel like you’re pretty much a single unit running like a well-oiled machine. You finish each others sentences and sometimes your desserts. When the wheels are rolling and you’re clicking right along, you couldn’t beat it with a stick. When it’s not, you just keep hoping and praying you can get back to that good old sweet feeling in your house that helps make it feel once more like a home.
By Dr. Juan Harrison
