I have always wondered when people get married what are they thinking? Are they really deceiving themselves that this is a forever love story? A source of eternal bliss? I ask each and every couple I meet, yes, the ones who are going through therapy. "Why do you want to make this relationship work?" The most common answer I get is, "Well, we are married now, aren't we?" It almost makes you wonder what this couple would've done had they not been married. The truth is, they would've still wanted to stick together, had they been in a relationship for long.
What most couples fail to realize is that love starts taking newer forms as the relationship grows older. The same old relationship, has now turned into a new relationship. When partners get stuck into their old forms and ways of loving, that is when they start having serious issues. They feel as if they do not love each other any longer. They only focus on the negatives in their partner. They continue doing it for so long that they feel they are trapped and they are in a horrible relationship. Gottman calls it the negative sentiment override.
So how can we perceive one relationship as a symphony of old and new relationships? How can we be made aware of the fact that the love between two people has merely evolved to a newer love, which probably has no name or label as of yet. If only couples realise this, it would make so many things easier.
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