For the past several days, I’ve been thinking about a question from a post on the Restored Lifestyle site. Like a song that continues repeating in your head, this question continues bouncing around. It’s like it demands an answer.
Perhaps it’s because the question reminds me of the old Chicago song, “Does anyone really know what time it is?” The persistent question continues echoing to that tune in my head.
The question is “Does anyone really know someone?” To put it in context think about it in terms of your spouse. Do you really know your spouse?
Although you’ve lived with them for years, the affair changed what and who you thought you knew. You may react with disdain on discovering this ‘hidden side’ of them.
Discovering a hidden side creates an ‘unreal’ situation. The person you thought you knew, you suddenly realize you don’t know. You wonder if your whole marriage has been based on a lie. The person you thought you married is no longer the person you’re married to.
Talk about an ‘existential crisis’. Such a discovery will have you second guessing many events in your life. You may even begin a new narrative for your marriage.
This question takes me back to a premise addressed in some previous emails. That premise is that you and your spouse are not as good at communicating as you thought you were.
The two of you may have talked about the minutiae of each of your lives, along with your likes and dislikes, but somehow missed each other. I attribute this to two factors.
One is that what is now considered intimacy is more associated with sex than it is closeness and connection with your spouse. When you fail to develop this in your marriage, it leaves a gap between the two of you.
The other factor is what I call ‘foreclosure’. This is when a couple takes short-cuts during the dating stage of your relationship. You develop closeness before developing a spirit of oneness in your relationship.
One method of insuring foreclosure is having sex prior to marriage. One of the consequences of that is the shutting down of communication.
It’s like you hooked up with each other before making sure that there is a solid connection between the two of you and that both of you were on the same page. You may have even figure that the two of you could sort that out later on, yet never managed getting around to it.
If you’ve either settled for a false sense of intimacy or been caught in foreclosure, it can leave you feeling like you really don’t know each other, despite years with each other.
It’s never too late to start improving your marriage relationship. Improving it starts with having healthy communication AND developing that part of intimacy concerning oneness in your marriage.
In the video “Let’s Talk: Hurting People and Healing Questions“, you can gain the tools you need in making these changes. Although you can’t change what happened, you can do something about where things are headed along with developing connection with your spouse.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
