Many men and women report that they miss the spontaneity of their dating years and even the early years of their marriages. But when they look for an explanation, they often come to the conclusion their spouse has changed or perhaps was faking an interest in spontaneity back then. When they assume love, they can see another possibility.
Folks often advise us to assume nothing. Take nothing for granted. Keep your mind open. Prepare for every possibility. Don’t be disappointed when things don’t go the way you think they should go. Good advice. Except that life would be darn difficult without any assumptions. We’d need to be constantly on guard against danger if we couldn’t assume what looks like a chair...
If your wife treats you like part of the furniture or can’t stop telling you how to earn more money, if your husband drives you nuts with his insensitive comments or misplaced laundry, it’s time to round up the usual suspects.
My advice to Assume Love applies only in a marriage or another relationship in which both partners have made a commitment to the longevity of the relationship. Until then, it might be wise to Assume the Worst. When you assume love, you deliberately seek out evidence of your mate’s love for you. Any actions with an ambiguous cause you can safely attribute to love because you have a partner...
Before I started assuming love, I engaged in the very popular “Isn’t my spouse awful?” game, as both instigator and player. To get it started, you ask your sister or people at work, or maybe even the stranger seated next to you on the bus, to confirm that there’s something terribly wrong with your spouse. You plead with them to agree that you’ve married someone...
I am a widow who got it right the second time. I have been sharing here since February 14, 2006 what I learned from that experience and from positive psychology, marriage research, and my training as a marriage educator.
