Riff on Cyndi's "Rant"

Cyndi just wrote an interesting post on our cultural concept of "soul mates" or "meant to be" and how movies and, I would add, book plots, often excuse and OK extra-marital/extra-relationship affairs with that misguided concept. Read her excellent and insightful post here.

It made me think of an article I just read recently calld "Can this marriage be fun?". It is worth a quick read, but the subtitle is "the depressing glut of marriage-improvement ideas". A quick summary of the article is that the culturally acceptable goal for marriage is constant perfection and we expect mutual emotional, financial and sexual gratification at all times. Anything less than that is a "problem". I think this cultural issue is closely tied to the cultural concept of "soul mates". In short, it is what we expect when we find our "soul mate" whom we are "meant to be" with forever- we expect perfection.

With this expectation of perfection, I think a lot of people fall victim to a hamster wheel of "marriage improvement projects". Or, worse, when things aren't perfect all the time they start looking for their "real" soul mate or think they've made big mistake.

It reminds me of when I first got married. People said marriage is the best and hardest thing they had ever done. Bishops, Stake presidents, friends and sisters alike all warned me that it would be hard. I didn't believe them. I thought we were different, special and that my relationship with DMP would be as happy and easy as it was then.

I think that attitude really came back to bite me when things did get really, really hard. I suffered for a long time from the "not fair" syndrome when I should have been working on moving forward and recognizing it was a challenge, a trial, a "rough road" - whatever - and worked to move beyond it in a patient and more restrained way. (BTW- I'm not being vague on purpose- I think both of my readers are familiar with DMP's challenges with social anxiety disorder and how it has affected our family- if you aren't and are curious, email me and we'll talk :>)

I'm so grateful that I have an awesome husband and when it was my turn to "go crazy" (generalized anxiety disorder, this time) he was able to be patient, supportive and loving even though I was crabby, scared and crazy.

My point is that I think our culture could benefit more from a shift in the expectation that marriage will be a perfect union of soulmates who are perfect and happy forever to a more realistic view that marriage has ups, downs, and is often boringly normal.

For this reason I love that the Church teaches that happy marriages take hard work and patience (remember? I said my Bishop and Stake Prez tried to tell me :>). One of my recent "daily gems" (seriously, thanks Jen for the heads-up!) was this from a 2007 Ensign article from Bruce C. Hafen:

"...Equal partnerships are not made in heaven- they are made on earth, one choice at a time, one conversations at a time, one threshold crossing at a time. And getting there is hard work."

Today's gem was from a 1992 Ensign article by President Benson:

"Restraint and self-control must be the ruling principles in the marriage relationship."

I love that last one- because he says the ruling principles should be something as unromantic as restraint and self-control. Not romance, not dating, not even communication- it is all about being respectful to your spouse.