During one of my live seminars, a woman asked me a common question.
She said, “How do I know if I married the right person?”
I noticed that there was a large man sitting next to her so I said,
“It depends. Is that your husband?”
In all seriousness, how do you know?
Hi. I’m Mort Fertel, author of Marriage
Fitness, and here’s the answer.
EVERY relationship has a cycle. In the beginning, you fell in love
with your spouse. You anticipated their call, wanted their touch, and
liked their idiosyncrasies.
Falling in love with your spouse wasn’t hard. In fact, it was
a completely natural and spontaneous experience. You didn’t have
to DO anything. That’s why it’s called “falling”
in love…because it’s happening TO YOU.
People in love sometimes say, “I was swept of my feet.”
Think about the imagery of that expression. It implies that you were
just standing there; doing nothing, and then something came along and
happened TO YOU.
Falling is love is easy. It’s a passive and spontaneous experience.
But after a few years of marriage, the euphoria of love fades. It’s
the natural cycle of EVERY relationship. Slowly but surely, phone calls
become a bother (if they come at all), touch is not always welcome (when
it happens), and your spouse’s idiosyncrasies, instead of being
cute, drive you nuts.
The symptoms of this stage vary with every relationship, but if you
think about your marriage, you will notice a dramatic difference between
the initial stage when you were in love and a much duller or even angry
subsequent stage.
At this point, you and/or your spouse might start asking, “Did
I marry the right person?” And as you and your spouse reflect
on the euphoria of the love you once had, you may begin to desire that
experience with someone else. This is when marriages breakdown. People
blame their spouse for their unhappiness and look outside their marriage
for fulfillment.
Extramarital fulfillment comes in all shapes and sizes. Infidelity
is the most obvious. But sometimes people turn to work, church, a hobby,
a friendship, excessive TV, or abusive substances.
But the answer to this dilemma does NOT lie outside your marriage.
It lies within it.
I’m not saying that you couldn’t fall in love with someone
else. You could. And TEMPORARILY you’d feel better. But you’d
be in the same situation a few years later. Because (listen carefully)
THE KEY TO SUCCEEDING IN MARRIAGE IS NOT FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON; IT’S
LEARNING TO LOVE THE PERSON YOU FOUND.
SUSTAINING love is not a passive or spontaneous experience. It’ll
NEVER just happen to you. You can’t “find” LASTING
love. You have to “make” it day in and day out. That’s
why we have the expression “the labor of love.” Because
it takes time, effort, and energy. And most importantly, it takes WISDOM.
You have to know WHAT TO DO to make your marriage work.
And make no mistake about it. Love is NOT a mystery. There are specific
things you can do (with or without your spouse) to succeed with your
marriage.
Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity),
there are also laws for relationships. Just as the right diet and exercise
program makes you physically stronger, certain habits in your relationship
WILL make your marriage stronger. It's a direct cause and effect. If
you know and apply the laws, the results are predictable—you can
“make” love.
That’s
why I created the Marriage
Fitness system. So you would have a step-by-step system for making
and maintaining love in your marriage. And the program works for any
marriage even if only one spouse does it.
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