Till Death Do Us Part?

What romantic words these are!  There you are, standing at the altar, full of hope and love, excitement and trust.  You are looking into the eyes of your beloved, the person with whom you intend to live a life of such harmony and devotion that all who know you will envy your wedded bliss.  This is the person with whom you will build a home, who will support you through good times and bad, with whom you will grow old as the adoring grandchildren play around your feet and you sit together on the porch watching the sunset.

OMG!  What happened?  How did such devotion, harmony and bliss turn to disgust, bitterness and anger?  Can you ever again look at this person the way you used to?  Can you ever go back to the way it was?  Has all this time together been wasted? 

The answers are no, no and no.

To begin with, you can never “go back.”  To go back would mean to just be where you were at a particular time, without being where you are now.  Can’t happen.  What you really want to know is can you regain those feelings you used to have of being in love and accepting each other and having that feeling of your life being ahead of you.  It’s possible, if that is what you really want with this particular person.

What you can do is build from this moment onward.  You can appreciate how you have learned and grown and evolved and decide to continue that process.  Whether or not you do it with your current partner is often a difficult decision.  It is usually attached to that question of “Has all this time together been wasted?” 

This is at the heart of the issue.  We all have a tendency to make the ends justify the means.  In other words, if my relationship is good now, then whatever came before was worth it.  Conversely, if my relationship is not good now, then all that time I put into it was for nothing and therefore wasted.

It is up to each of us to make each moment count.  It is your choice to wake up each morning and say “Today will be a good day” and know that it is up to you to make it a good day.  It is up to you to not give away your power and allow someone else, anyone else, to make this day other than what you want.  That goes for yesterday and tomorrow as well.

We all choose our reality, and what those weeks or years were before a break-up is up to you.  Whatever is going on now does not have to change what went before.  Now is when you decide what will make today a good day and if that means taking a different path from the person you once thought would be with you forever, then so be it.

We are all on the road of our lives.  Some people pass us the other way, some are going our way but at a different pace, and some join us for a time and then take a different road or speed up or fall behind.  There is no right or wrong to it, it’s just life. 

Enjoy the journey!