Give Up Your Dreams of a "Perfect Marriage" and Work Toward a "Good Marriage"

II. Give Up Your Dreams of a "Perfect Marriage" and Work Toward a "Good Marriage"

There are no perfect marriages for the simple reason that there are no perfect people. Teen-age expectations of an idealized marriage are unrealistic. There are some more or less ideal marriages, but they are generally the ones wheich have been workded out through the years.

When you have shaken the rice out of your hair, you have just started on a journey which may involve "debt, drudgery, and diapers," as one wife expressed it. Now begins the long hard pull toward the goal of a workable marriage. You begin to discoover that your young knight has faults you had never discovered during the courtship. (He's discovering some things about you which he never expected, too.) He is not quite the person you had dreamed of, but then, neither are you the person he thought he was marrying. Irritations set in, differences appear that you had not counted on. Mariage is the most difficult and complex of all human relationships, and it requires patience, skill, tact, emotional and spiritual growth. You can "grow a good marriage" if you are willing to work at it.

Ten Commandments for Wives Series
Cecil G. Osborne, D.D.