A comment left at the Restored Lifestyle site said more than the writer suspected. She said “I thought we had a wonderful marriage.”
She’s not alone in making such a statement. There are many of you who think that you have a ‘wonderful’ marriage. On the surface, it sounds like a good thing.
On a closer look, her choice of wording reveal some deeper truths. Truth has ways of working its way out into the open in your life. Your choice of words is not happenstance.
Some of the definitions of ‘wonderful’ from Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language include something that is full of excitement or surprise.
It also has an element of puzzlement with it. Another definition of wonderful is ‘strange’ in the sense of being out of the ordinary.
Her comment has meanings on several levels. She may have intended conveying that she was happy in her marriage, yet the word choice carries a hidden meaning of a marriage filled with emotional drama and events.
Your word choices reveal more than you thought. There was truth in the saying “ out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Your choice of words speaks volumes.
Wonderful also has connotations of being dreamy which leaves me wondering if there was a fantasy going on where she thinks her marriage is better than it is.
In modern culture, the term wonderful is seen as synonymous with something joyous rather than the sense of awe at “how can that be?” that’s also part of something being wonder-ful.
With all she’s been through, her description meets that definition of marriage filled with excitement, albeit in more of a negative manner than a positive one. There’s been one surprise after another, with the affair being just another one of them.
You have to consider whether you want a healthy marriage or a wonderful one. Health marriages, on the other hand would be a marriage where there is genuine sharing, encouragement, security and stability. This is different than one that is strange or filled with emotional fireworks and exciting events.
When you have a series of emotionally dramatic events, it wears you out. Each crisis or event takes a little more out of you.
Researchers have found that stress is cumulative. You may make it through each crisis, but making it through comes with a price tag that your body and mind will eventually have to pay.
The price tag for a ‘wonder-ful’ marriage may be symptoms of trauma. If you’ve suffered through crisis after crisis, those events catch up in the form of memories, sleep problems, obsessions and anxieties.
You will want to consider ordering the video “Overcoming Affair Trauma”. It helps you get unstuck from always being on edge. It helps you pull out of the suspicious thinking and symptoms associated with cumulative trauma.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
