Couple of Snowflakes

Questions for Couples:

• Do you want or need time apart from each other?
• How much money/time is devoted to each of your hobbies?
• Is it important to share your spiritual beliefs?
• Who takes care of the cleaning, the cooking, the bills, the planning?
• How often to you see family and friends, and are you together or apart?
• How many kids will you have, and when? If you do, how will you raise them?
• How do you deal with conflict?
• What makes your partner feel good? How do you show your love to them?
• How has your relationship or how have your views changed over time?

It's fascinating to talk to friends and other couples about how they view romantic relationships and marriage. Whether or not they're single, every person has their own perspective on these things. And each couple seems to have a very unique set of "ground rules" that they live by, a common understanding about how to live together and how to relate to one another.

This personal perspective is developed by many things. It's based on our values, the things that we believe in and expect. It's based on our personality, the way that we communicate and listen, the things that make us feel good or bad. It's based on how we grew up, on our experiences, on our history. It's based on everyday things, like how much money we have or where we live. Everything that makes us so distinctly us drives how we see relationships.

That's where things get interesting. The lessons that we have learned and the rules that we live by may not work very well at all for someone else. The spoken and unspoken guidelines that we use (or will use) within our own romantic relationship may give us a lifetime of love but those same guidelines may cripple another couple.

And when we discuss these things with other people, we may be shocked to learn how they look at things. We may try to convince them that we have it figured out. We may analyze their relationship to spot potential dangers and explain their actions. We have gained some wisdom and we're confident that everyone would benefit from it.

Just look at the first question at the top. Some couples love being together constantly. At home, at work, at play, with friends...they're hardly ever apart. Some couples relish their time apart, showing that absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. Some couples live with the fact that their careers keep them away from each other for extended periods of time, and some couples would prefer to change careers rather than be apart for weeks at a time. The thing is, a healthy relationship is possible in any of these scenarios.

As I continue to learn and grow as a married man, I'm always discovering things about myself and about my beautiful wife and about our relationship. I want to write and explain some of these things. Sometimes it's practical ("Take out the trash before it stinks") and sometimes it's more philosophial ("What about her love languages?") but the goal is to deepen a healthy and passionate love for one another.

And as I continue to write about what I/we have learned, it's tempting to turn these insights into dogma and present it as wisdom from on high. That's just not how life works. We're all unique, we're all a little normal and we're all a little odd. We're a couple of snowflakes - or just some flakes, if you will. Each relationship is an incredible combination of two individual souls and we need to appreciate that and learn from each other, applying whatever works without dismissing the rest...