Chapter One
” It should have been obvious but I missed it. I had never read a book on marriage so my mind was not cluttered with reality. I just knew I had feelings for karolyn that I had never felt with any other girl. When we kissed, it was like a trip to heaven. When I saw her after an extended absence, I actually felt chill bumps. I liked everything about her”.
“I liked the way she looked, the way she talked, the way she walked and I was especialy captivated by her brown eyes. I even liked her mother and volunteered to paint her house. Anything to let this girl know how much I loved her. I could not imagine any other girl being more wonderful than she”.
Yet withing six months after marriage, we were both more miserable than we ever imagined. The euphoric feelings were gone and instead we felt hurt, anger, disappointment and resentment.
We thought that the positive perceptions and feelings we had for each other would be with us for a lifetime and now I know that Being in Love is not a sufficient foundation on which to build a successful marriage.
We look across the room or down the hall, and there she/he is -wham-o, “we fall in love and there is nothing we can do about it. It is beyond our control.
But we fail to consider the fact that our SOCIAL, SPIRITUAL and INTELLECTUAL interests are miles apart. Our VALUE SYSTEM and GOALS are contradictory, but we are “in love”.
When the “tingles” come: that warm, bubbly, tingly feeling for the opposite sex that makes us agree to go on a date with him/her.
Sometimes the tingles are lost on the first date when we find out something about them that we don’t like.
Other times the tingles increase the more we are together with him/her and before we know it we are thinkin about them all day and night. We see them as the most wonderful exciting person we have ever known. We want to be with them at every moment and we dream of spending the rest of our lives with them.
Yes, the tingles are important but should not be the basis to get married.
Being in Love is an emotional and obsessive experience. However, emotions change and obsessions fade. Research indicates that the average Life Span of the “in love” obsession is TWO YEARS.
When we come down from that emotional high, our differences begin to emerge and we often find ourselves arguing with the person we once thought was perfect and then we realize Being in Love is NOT the foundation for a Happy Marriage.
For those of You currently in a dating relationship, you need to know that the primary purpose of dating is to get to know each other and to examine the INTELLECTUAL, EMOTIONAL, SOCIAL, SPIRITUAL and PHYSICAL foundations for Marriage
To be continued…
