The 8 Truths of Marriage
My best man speech from Toby and Alissa Hamer’s wedding.
When Toby asked me to be his best man, I said no. Thinking that my current life situation would not allow me to deliver what Toby ultimately deserved in a “best man”. But in true form of Toby and I’s relationship (since age 3), he said “To bad, you are doing it”. And for that Toby, I will be forever grateful, and as usual you were right and I will cherish these last few days forever.
So tonight, instead of getting up here and giving the cliche drunk best man speech about how Toby and I ignited the night sky of Carmel Indiana with a 40 foot fireball – or blindly stating how great your marriage and future will be, I wanted to offer a few insights and truths in to marriage, that I wish someone would have said to me when I was married over a decade ago. After talking to all of my happily married, miserably married and divorced friends, here is what I feel are the most important 8 truths of marriage.
1. Every single human strives for 4 basic emotional needs: the need to be loved and to love, the need to have a sense of purpose in life, the need for a positive self image and the need for personal space. But understand that expecting your partner to fill those needs is completely unfair – as those needs can never be met by anyone other than yourself. Putting those demands on your spouse is to setup the relationship for failure.
2. We often forget that there is no past, and there is no future – there is only the present moment. Hanging on to past baggage or striving for some future moment that is better than the current one, offers no real value in life or marriage. So forgive each other for your past hurts and be willing to surrender to what is. If you both can learn to completely live in the present moment, you will find that it is virtually impossible to stay upset or feel let down.
3. You cannot change your partner, you can only change yourself – and hopefully your partner will follow.
4. When you are wrong, admit it. When you are right, shut up.
5. Love is the ideal things, marriage is the real thing. When you first fall in love, you fall for an illusion, a mental picture, a fantasy. But the real marriage beings when that illusion ends and you start to discover and accept your spouse for who they truly are – a beautiful and unique individual.
6. The qualities that first attracted you to your partner will be the ones that drive you the most crazy. However, in the end you will find that those annoying qualities are the ones that are missed the most when they leave this earth.
7. Even in marriage you will still have periods of loneliness and pain – but both can be dramatically diluted by continually putting your partners needs in front of your own, focusing on falling in love multiple times, and continually forgive to a point where it becomes habitual.
8. As you venture down this exciting, scary and often bumpy road – rest assured that no matter how bad things get, or how hard things my seem – you will always be able to take one another’s hands and without saying a single word, know that together you will be able to make it through this things we call life.
“To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart, and to sing it back to them when they have forgotten it”. - anonymous quote.
Toby and Alissa, I cannot express enough how happy I am that both of you have decided to take this journey together and to learn the songs in each of your hearts. It won’t be easy, but it will be absolutely worth it.
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BRAVO - major truth, well said!