Ever After

"It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis."
Margaret Bonnano

So if the whole “happily ever after concept” is utopia, how can we keep on going once this huge disappointing discovery shows its face? The first months (for some even years) of marriage are all sunshine, and rainbow, and star shower; but as it progresses further, we get more and more cloudy days, with occasional storms that leave a lot of destruction and devastation behind. Some days are so foggy we can barely see what’s around and opt to hide inside till the surroundings clear up. And sometimes you are forced to live in the longest polar night and you forget how it feels to see the light…

I used to believe that strong beginnings provide you with extra strength in the rough times: you can lean on the best of your memories and persuade yourself that if happiness was possible back then, why not replicate it now with minor adjustments? What an erroneous notion: you can only ride shortly on the quickly evaporating fuel made of blissful memories. Very soon your matrimonial vehicle will need new gas, the fact that you filled up the tank years ago won’t be good enough.

Only today matters. And every day is a new today. You might still care about yesterday, you can go as far as the past week with your appreciation, but you are very unlikely to care what happened a month ago. You can’t feel the same way you felt back then, the past emotions get buried under an avalanche of all the new feelings you incurred since then.

It’s disastrous to think that you will give more effort to your relationship next month/year, or when you have more time, or when you are out of a major bout of depression, or when a daunting project is completed at work, or when the kids get a little older and don’t need as much of your attention, or when you are in a better financial state. Only today matters. You might not have the most advantageous conditions to patch things up but you need to make the best of what you’ve got today. Operating on limited resources is a challenge but it provokes enough efficiency and inventiveness to make that shift you’ve been hoping would happen on its own. You need to work on a daily dose of marital happiness: you are the writer, the producer and the actor of the script called “MY happily ever after”. It’s in the small things - in extra attention you’ve ignored to show before, in affection that ignites a sleeping heart, in words that express love, hope, happiness – all the good things that could be happening in your marriage if you pushed the disagreement and hurt feelings to the background and brought the positive to the front.