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Tred posted 2/12/2014 09:31 AM

Interesting article in The Atlantic: "The First Lesson of Marriage 101: There Are No Soul Mates". Seems topical with all the recent focus on twin flames.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-first-lesson-of-marriage-101-there-are-no-soul-mates/283712/

I found it interesting.

Pass posted 2/12/2014 11:02 AM

What a great course. One time when I told The Princess that she was quite consistently rotten to me for the first five years of our marriage, she said, "Yeah, I guess I just didn't know HOW to be married."

No shit!

NikkiD posted 2/12/2014 11:16 AM

Awesome!! Now I know Im not crazy. My WS is alwasy talking about its easy...and there is no skill involved....I tried, to know avail to explain that there absolutely is skill required and learned behaviors. AND this does it quite well!

norabird posted 2/12/2014 11:44 AM

“The foundation of our course is based on correcting a misconception: that to make a marriage work, you have to find the right person. The fact is, you have to be the right person.”

THIS. Oh my God. It's sad, because you can't teach it, and I assumed it was a given that it would be true on both sides. Here is what all the 'you can't fix broken' advice comes from. Here is the sad part about being in love with someone who turns out to not understand themselves--because there's nothing you can do for them to change that.

I also think all the 'love' I had overlooked dissimilarities in values because hey, love mattered more than those differences...but the differences were that he was less empathetic, less interested in other people, more focused on power, basically not attuned to/caring about others, which in the end had a whole heckuvalot to do with how he was able to treat me so badly.

Lots of 'ding ding ding' reading this for me. Thanks for sharing.

Tred posted 2/12/2014 12:44 PM

I thought the article had some great points as well. The "being the right person" point was great. I remember hearing once (can't remember the source) that marriage isn't 50/50 - it's both giving 100%.