What Happened to "Happily Ever After"?
What Happened To “HAPPILY EVER AFTER?”
by Ken Simmons
Unfortunately marital bliss is all too soon replaced with “I can’t stand the sight of you” in American marriages. It could be you who begins to wonder why you started out loving each other so deeply and passionately in the beginning, and now you wish you’d never met. Fights seem to erupt over the most trivial things, and once the fight stops often neither can remember why the fight started in the first place.
Tragically statistics show that you have a 50/50 chance of your marriage ending in divorce. Let’s see if we can look at the causes, and hopefully we can also come up with ways to prevent that outcome for you if you’re thinking about tying the knot.
Many marriages start out like this . . . In the early years the fights often ended up with some pretty exciting times of “making up,” -- (you can fill in the blanks) -- but now instead of making up you often need a referee to send you to a neutral corner to try to patch up the wounds and stop the bleeding. And if those wounds don’t heal soon the neutral corner might just be at Tenth and Main in a divorce court, and you end up asking “What's happened to our marriage?”
On a personal note my two failed marriages were the aftermath of what we just described above. What started off with “I will always love you,” ended up with “I wish I’d never met you.” Since I have never felt that divorce was the right answer for a troubled marriage, but was instead an off ramp, I was the one who heard the words, “I want a divorce, I just don’t love you anymore.” Who’d a-thunk it – loveable me.
But as the old cliché predicted, “the third time’s the charm.” After more than 41 years of marriage my wife Diane and I have still never had what you’d call a fight, or an argument. We’ve never had a shouting match or ended up with name calling because those words leave scars, and the wounds sometimes never heal. Sure, we have disagreements, but we never let it get heated and out of hand, and we never go to bed upset.
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Most marriages begin when passions are high and love making seems hot and heavy and never-ending. In my novel “Jeané Rose, the Face of Courage,” the husband shouts out to Jeané, “What about the sex? In the beginning with you it was never-ending, but now it’s just never!!”
When the hormones begin to wane the passion often starts to fade, and that’s when the troubles often begin because the foundation for the marriage was never on solid ground.
We often read about celebrities who seem so passionately in love, but all too soon the romance is gone and it’s time for a change. If we can pick on Tom Cruise for a while, he is a perfect example of the ever-changing list of romantic partners in Hollywood. We begin with Melissa Gilbert (she says they never had sex), followed by Heather Locklear, Rebecca de Mornay, Cher, Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Katie Holmes, and finally Hayley Atwell. Cruise’s marriage to Nicole Kidman made tabloid headlines that spoke of them as the “Perfect Couple” and the “Great Hollywood Romance,” but after 11 years of marriage Cruise moved on, and on, and on. This is not unique to Cruise. Hollywood is replete with examples of stars hop-scotching from one relationship to another.
The reasons are simple. When marriages are solely based on romantic love, and the passions are high they are doomed to fail, and they are left wondering what happened. Romantic, erotic love, and unconditional love are often at odds with one another, but it is possible for them to merge into a true, Biblical marriage where the love does not fade but grows deeper with time.
So what is our secret? Our marriage is stronger today than in the beginning because my wife is my best friend, and I am hers, and neither of us is willing to say or do anything that would cut or wound the other. I treasure her, and I am committed to the Biblical admonition to “love my wife as Christ loved the church,” and I try daily to live up to that standard. In turn, she honors me as her husband, and both of us would walk through fire to protect the other.
In the movie “War Room,” the elderly widow challenges the younger woman with a troubled marriage, (paraphrasing) “You’re fighting the wrong fight. You’ve got to learn how to fight for your marriage, and your husband is not your enemy, but it’s the devil who wants to destroy your marriage. You’ve got to pray for your husband, and you’ve got to tell the devil to leave you and your husband alone. Kick him out of your home.” The young woman later shouts, “Devil, this home is under new management, and I want you out of my home. You can’t have me, and you certainly can’t have my husband. Go back to hell where you belong!” It worked, the War Room marriage survived, and then thrived.
I have no better advice, nor any secret formula that I can pass on to you for a successful marriage. It is so important that you learn how to fight for your marriage. Give it your all -- It’s worth it.