“We’ve been good, even a blast, but don’t you feel like something’s missing?”
(Incubus, “If Not Now, When?”)

It’s very common, in our modern search for lasting romance, to seek out a relationship that’s got the whole package. We want to feel, with total certainty, that nothing’s missing.

I understand this quest; marriage is the most important relationship in our lives, and with all the vulnerability and maturity it demands, it better be worth it. The difficulty comes when you try to discern whether it’s the relationship that’s missing something, or it’s just you.

So often, we try to use our marriage to fill holes in our individual souls, if you will, that marriage simply cannot fill.
–Holes like…insecurity.
–Holes like…loneliness.
–Holes like…past trauma.

And the most common hole of all: our desperate craving to feel validated. (We know we’re clamoring for this validation whenever our strongest fantasy is to hear our spouse cry out in ecstasy: “Honey, you were right.”) A lifelong romance definitely needs enough mutual respect, conversational chemistry, and complementary values in order to work. But those things don’t just happen naturally–they are the byproduct of our own individual efforts to fill our own gaps, heal our own wounds, and most of all, give ourselves the validation we crave. (We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.) That way we can be free to want our spouses, and free from needing them, or our relationship with them, to have absolutely everything.

Peace begins with pause,