Marriage

"Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up."
-- Joseph Barth  

"In marriage, it is often the case that 'you win or the relationship wins'."  (And it's up to you to choose whether you want to be right or effective.)
 -- Terry Hargrave

"People think they have to find their soulmate to have a good marriage.  You're not going to 'find' your soulmate.  Anyone you meet already has soulmate: their mother, their father, their lifelong friends. You get married, and after 20 years of loving, bearing and raising kids, and/or meeting other difficult life challenges - then you'll have 'created' your soulmate."
 -- Diane Sollee

Ann Meara of the comedy team Stiller and Meara observed awhile ago in a  New York Times interview of her 30-plus year marriage," Was it love at first sight? Well, it wasn't then - but it sure is now." 

"I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person, but I do know that many people have a lot of wrong ideas about marriage and what it takes to make that marriage happy and successful.  I'll be the first to admit that it's possible that you did marry the wrong person.  However, if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all.  On the other hand, if you marry the right person, and treat that person wrong, you certainly will have ended up marrying the wrong person.  I also know that it is far more important to be the right person than it is to marry the right person.  In short, whether you married the right or wrong person is primarily up to you."
 -- Zig Ziglar

I met with a couple yesterday in what we all agreed to call "marriage triage."  We were sorting out the priorities of the wounds to address in a marriage where love is in serious jeopardy of dying from starvation.  There are questions in each other's mind about whether they can go, or whether they might just have married the wrong person.  There is a shared fixation on being right about things - or on "winning" the ongoing philosophical arguments (which only results in both losing).  The answer lies in God's hands. 

I'm doing all that a coach can, which is to hold their vision while they exercise new muscles to do so on their own, and to love them with all my heart (having had that lesson reinforced the other day).  On Sunday, I will be facilitating another of the monthly Marriage Commitment Group meetings, and I offer these quotes and sentiments as our central theme.  And, after talking to this couple about these meetings and hearing their interest in the idea, I want to ask the members of this Sunday's group if they'd be willing to accept another couple into our next meeting in June.  Let me know, folks.