Does 'Happily Ever After' Really Happen?

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June 5th, 2006

Love’s Dance

Good Morning,

Hope you are all doing well. If not, I hope you are taking positive steps towards changing things. Sometimes just knowing that we are moving in the right direction can really help lift our spirits. Love is definitely one of those things worth doing right.

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I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall." - Eleanor Roosevelt

The people who get on in this world are the ones who get up and look for the circumstances they want and, if they can’t find them, make them. – George Bernard Shaw, Playwright

The concept of two people living together for 25 years without a serious dispute suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep. – A.P. Herbert

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Does ‘Happily Ever After’ Really Happen?

So many of us stood at the alter saying our wedding vows knowing that we would do a better job of things than our parents had done. We grew up with storybooks and movies showing us that once you got to the wedding day, ‘they all lived happily ever after.’ Then when our marriages didn’t turn out quite like that we have all of this guilt and feelings of failure. We tell ourselves that we must be flawed or that our partners didn’t try hard enough and that is why we failed at something that should have been easy and blissful. The truth is, ‘happily ever after’ is very rare and it’s not a very realistic expectation.

Yes, I’ve seen it happen, but only twice. Both couples were very similar and yet quite different. When I met them, they were settled into a lovely smooth rhythm and all of them were in their early 50’s. Both of the women were very strong independent charming personalities. Each could lead an army if she chose, but would rather keep things peaceful whenever possible. These were not weak docile submissive women by any means. They both spoke their minds openly and honestly but with tact and diplomacy. You knew were you stood with them and you knew why they felt the way they did about things. I never heard either of them whine or complain about rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. They both kept incredibly clean beautiful homes and made it look effortless. They both married men who fell in love with them at first sight. Both men were intelligent, charming, peace-loving, gentle souls. Both men could see the humor in any argument. They were both natural leaders, successful in their careers, smart with money and investments, but not at all greedy nor arrogant. All four of them were attractive and healthy individuals. None of them were needy, codependent, addicted, violent, or abusive in any way. All four of them had positive happy marriages role modeled to them before ever entering into their own partnerships. One woman changed her entire religious belief system to that of her husband’s and never regretted it for a moment. The other woman quietly went along practicing her religion without ever badgering her somewhat non-religious husband to conform to her views. The two couples had a total of seven children, mostly girls. All of the children grew up to be bright, strong, independent thinkers, with college educations and careers that they found interesting. They all were able to choose mates for themselves that were also able to have happy beautiful marriages. Both couples were able to retire in nice upper-middle class homes with enough money stashed away to be able to travel and have fun, as they grow old together. So, yes, it does happen. However, it’s incredibly rare.

Why doesn’t it happen like that for the rest of us? The painful truth is that most of us are not as mentally healthy and emotionally stable as the two couples I just described. First of all, if we’re honest, our parents rarely role model ‘happily ever after’ to us. Yes they may have stayed together but not because they were happy. They stayed together because of religious beliefs, cultural peer pressure, fear of being alone, financial needs, or out of some sort of co-dependent twisted need. If your goal is to simply stay married, than those are all perfectly valid motivators to keep you with your spouse. However, if you actually want to like the person you are with and like who you are when you are with them, then it’s going to take more than these outside influences to keep a marriage together. So many people say that marriage is hard work. If you are married only because of morals or values and not because you genuinely enjoy living with your spouse, then yes, I suppose it is quite difficult to make a marriage last. Our parents usually role model commitment and tenacity despite the fact that they really don’t like each other very much or they role model cutting your losses and moving on to pursue something less stressful and difficult. But we can’t blame our parents for our own marriages can we? We are old enough to know that it’s up to us to make or break our own vows.

One of the biggest mistakes we make is that we feel so insecure and afraid that nobody will want us, so we marry the first nice person who comes along without really analyzing if we are truly compatible on a deeper more meaningful level. The initial rush of someone, anyone liking us is usually all it takes to convince ourselves as teenagers and young twenty-somethings that this is ‘the one.’ Both of the couples that I mentioned earlier had dated other people and were self-confident as individuals. None of them were in a hurry, desperate, nor felt that they needed someone else to make them feel complete. They entered the relationships mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally healthy strong and independent. None of them settled for less than what they were looking for therefore none of them felt a need to change their spouse into something other than who they already were. They were able to love each other completely fully and without a lot of fuss. Through the ups and downs of their lives together, they naturally disagreed at times, but divorce was not an issue because they truly deeply loved each other.

So many of us think that if we find Prince Charming or Miss Right that we’ll be so happy and we’ll feel so much unconditional love that we’ll just morph into better versions of ourselves. We stand there at the alter saying our vows really believing in our heart of hearts that by saying these vows we are automatically supposed to be capable of creating ‘happily ever after’ with each other. The only way that is going to happen is if both of you are healthy on all levels before joining together and neither of you is marrying out of desperation, need, or settling for less than what you really want in life. ‘Healthy’ does not mean ‘perfect’ and ‘need’ does not mean ‘love.’ You must be healthy enough to truly love the other just as they are. If you are both healthy and compatible, then your relationship should flow easily. You may have to work at parenting, work at financial goals, work at finding time for each other, but you should never have to work at finding the love between you.

Tomorrow's Edge

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Long Live the American Dream!

Skye Thomas is the CEO of Tomorrow’s Edge, an Internet leader in inspiring leaps of faith. She became a writer in 1999 after twenty years of studying personal growth, motivation, soulmates, self-esteem, parenting, spirituality, metaphysics, family dynamics, dating, and astrology. Her books, articles, and astrological forecasts have inspired people of all ages and faiths to recommit themselves to the pursuit of happiness. To read more of her articles, previews of her books, and her astrology forecasts, go to www.TomorrowsEdge.net. To read more about Skye and to sign up to receive her free weekly newsletter, go to www.SkyeThomas.com.

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