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Navigating Love and Changing Beliefs
This couple has a story.
They were young believers.
They fell in love.
They got married.
Then they started… oh no… deconstructing!
That is… their beliefs started changing.
They were still in love, but things had become challenging. Their relationship wasn’t as easy as before. There were questions, awkward moments and silences, arguments, confusion, disappointment, and fear.
Sometimes they wondered if they were going to make it.
They realize they were in a kind of mixed marriage because they didn’t believe the same.
They had to renegotiate their relationship.
They had to reassess what their love for each other meant.
They came to realize a few things:
They are not their beliefs. Beliefs are simply thoughts we especially cling to and adore. They are like ripples on the surface of the water. They’re not the body of water itself. The surface always changes. Thoughts always change. They fell in love with the person… not just their thoughts and beliefs. They remembered when they first met and how love happened, even before they really knew each other’s minds.
They committed to change. Remember the marriage vows? For better or for worse, richer or poorer, In sickness and in health, etc? That means they committed to each other as they and things change. Which they will! Including how we look, feel, and think.
They discovered love embraces the other in all their authentic uniqueness. In fact, love encourages the other to find and discover and manifest their authentic uniqueness in a safe and secure environment.
Here’s one secret ingredient to a passionate marriage: polarity. Like a battery with a positive and negative pole that creates the energy, so does difference and diversity in a relationship.
When Lisa and I first met, I was a naïve Canadian boy and she was a fiesty Alabama girl. We were so different from one another in so many ways. But the passion in our relationship was on fire and still is.
Yes, in many ways we merged, integrated, became entangled and enmeshed, but over time we had to learn how to individuate. This happened later in our marriage. But oh my the sparks flew and reignited our romance.
Always remember… you fell in love with them, not their beliefs.