This year, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival which happened in August 1969. When it happened, many people sincerely believed that ‘love is all you need’ in solving your problems.
We all need love, and it is foundational to relationships. As the band said, you do need somebody to love. Although love is important, when it comes to recovering from an affair, you need MORE than just love.
The Woodstock answer to relationship issues isn’t enough. The Woodstock version of love has plenty of warm fuzzy feelings, but your marriage needs more than that. You need more than the positive optimism and bright colors in recovering from affairs.
The Woodstock love makes for pleasant window dressing. It provides all the hope of a utopian love without answers on how to get there.
On the positive side, the sense of community that it brought was a bright spot. These days, the closest thing to that community is burning man, which despite all the positive vibes, hasn’t brought healing to marriages either.
So love alone doesn’t work and neither does community alone.
In moving past an affair, you need a love that practices self-control. You need honesty. You need a type of love that is committed and willingly puts selfishness aside.
If the Woodstock answer worked, the world would have seen a drop in divorces and affairs. All that love couldn’t even keep some of the bands involved together.
Consider that The Jeff Beck Group broke up prior to the event, the Byrds didn’t show due to a melee at a recent venue and Lighthouse thought the event had ‘bad vibes’. Love didn’t fix these problems.
Had love fixed everything, the world would have seen solid committed marriages from the Woodstock experience. The reality is that your marriage needs MORE than just love. Love alone won’t fix it all.
When your marriage is suffering and under pressure, you need help. You need the hope that love brings along with a solid way to achieve it. You need a marriage relationship you can count on, rather than one where your spouse has wandering eyes and heart.
Getting your marriage back to a good place takes love and work. It requires effort in knowing when to speak and when to hold your peace.
When love is behind your efforts, it won’t seem like work. It’s something you want to do.
It takes vision, it takes commitment and it takes work at finding ways of connecting with each other. These days, there is more competition for the attention and affections of your spouse. You need ways of regaining them.
A good place to start is by rebuilding the trust in your marriage. In the video, “How Can I Trust You Again?”, I lay out the specific requirements of trust and solid ways of putting them in your marriage relationship.
You can once again have a sense of togetherness and connection. Achieving it will take more than music and positive vibes. Rather than wish and hope for change, you can start taking the necessary steps in turning your marriage around.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
