The Twilight myth

I finally broke down and read the Twilight series. I wasn't planning on reading them, but I got sick and a friend loaned them all to me and over the coarse of about a week, I read all four books. I have to say the books are addicting. I finally understood what all the talk was about.

When talking to Ace about them he made a comment about something he does not like about the movies. He has seen both movies, but has not read the books. He said that they give girls a false idea of what love is like. After thinking about that for a day I began to see what he meant. The love that Bella and Edward have for each other is extremely intense. They fall in love over a short period of time and their love is is impossibly resilient. Their love survives, rouge vampire attacks, werewolves and the fact that he finds her blood and smell like a drug. That kind of love just is not real.

Early on in a relationship we all have been known to be on that adrenaline high. It feels great, but we can't function on that kind of high for extended periods of time. Eventually our bodies build a tolerance to the adrenaline and that new ooey gooey love feeling fades into a more manageable love. It can still be intense, but the way the love between Edward and Bella is what little and big girls dream about. The thought of a guy willing to do anything for you, the guy that will vow to protect you and wants to spend forever with you is every girls dream. Throw in the forbidden part that makes it all dangerous and these girls are setting themselves up to fail when it comes to love.

I'll admit, I love the story and the movies now, but I also know that I can't hold onto the dream of a man that would rather die than live his life without me. Its no wonder so many marriages and relationships fail when Hollywood and novels put such unreal expectations into our minds. Things become comfortable and mundane and we long for that rush of love that we either once new early in our relationship or that we have seen and read. We think if we leave and or cheat that we can find that kind of love and maybe this time it will last. We are all adrenaline junkies, hoping for that high again, rarely realizing that it is only temporary. But it is when that high fades that real love can really shine. Being strong enough to get past that desire for the temporary high and live for the comfortable feeling of lasting love is what true love is all about. Sure there will be times where you want there to be more or things won't be great, but we can't doubt our love. Doubt will only make us crazy and doubt will only cause pain for us and the one we love.

As my husband has been known to say, the grass is greener where you water it. Where are you watering?

Who am I?

I have been married for 13 years and I will admit it has not been
easy. I love my husband and I love our two girls, but for years I let
them be my world and I was just there to serve them. I had no identity
other than Ace's wife or Lennon and McCartney's mother. My husband is
in radio and I would go help him at events before we had the girls and
I actually had a name tag made that read "Ace's Wife" I didn't bother to
ask for one that said Bethany because no one knew who that was, not
even me.

I'm a Christian and early in our marriage as we moved around a lot and
found churches, I would see the other Christian women and think I was
supposed to look, talk and dress like them. I rarely bought myself new
clothes, but when I did, I didn't know what I liked so I had to take
someone with me to help pick out the "right" clothes. Sweater sets and
capri pants if I was with friends and big t-shirt and jeans with I was
with my husband. I was hiding who I was behind all the supposed to's
and should be's.

It took a big hit to my marriage for me to even see that this was
happening. My husband and I nearly divorced about three years ago. I
had been a stay home mom for 6 years. We had moved so much with my
husbands job and I had been home so long that my teaching license had
expired. As I thought about my life as a divorced woman, I was
terrified, first because I didn't want to be a divorced woman and
second because I didn't know how to be anyone besides Ace's wife and
Lennon and McCartney's mom. What could I do besides take care of the
house and children? I ended up getting a job at a Day care because it
was all I knew, no one else would hire me because I didn't have
experience as anything else.

We ended up reconciling, but I still didn't know who I was. I knew
that I enjoyed photography, but all I did was take pictures of my
kids. I knew I liked to write, but all I did was blog about my family.
It is three years later and I still ask myself who Bethany is. I have
changed to dressing like I want to instead of how I think everyone
thinks I should, but I have not picked up my camera except to
photograph my kids. My husband and I wrote a workbook on marriage. Can
you guess what I wrote about? It was about being a wife :)

I do want to have an identity and I will admit that I am closer to
being Bethany than I was three years ago, but I still wonder what
people see when they look at me. Do they see Bethany or do they see
Ace's wife and Lennon and McCartney's mom? And if they do see Bethany,
who do they think she is? Who do I think she is?

Your box of snakes

When you have been hurt by your spouse, how do you you get past the feelings of hurt? It is easy to sulk and become withdrawn if you are the one who has been hurt, but is that best for your marriage? I think Not! And yet thats what some many of us do. We sit around and play the poor me role and by doing so we are not making things better, we are actually making things worse.

If this is what we are doing then it is time to STOP! Yeah it stinks when you have been hurt, but holding onto a grudge or withdrawing from your spouse is hurting you both. I have said it before and I will say it again, FORGIVENESS IS NOT JUST FOR THE PERSON WHO DID THE HURT, IT IS FOR THE PERSON HURT TOO!

Physical and emotional intimacy with your spouse is a must, but when you are holding something between you, it is like you have a box between you filled with snakes so you can't even reach over the box without feeling like you will get bitten. Have you been there? I know I have. I've been hurt many times. Sometimes getting over it is no problem, but other times I start filling that box with snakes. The longer I do that the bigger the box gets and the harder is is going to be to get them out of there.

It has taken me a long time and yeah I will admit it I am still known to do it, to learn how to get past the hurt. I've even been known to be hurt by my husband's hurt. That really doesn't help, it is like having two boxes of snakes between us, it is possible to get them out of there, but sooner or later one of us is going to get hurt more. That hurt is really just going to hurt us more. It is literally a venom to our marriage. It can be sucked out, but there will always be a scar there because we never should have put the box there in the first place.

So what's the first step of getting past it? Well, first you have to acknowledge that you are hurt by what was done. Sometimes it is obvious, but sometimes not only does our spouse not know we are hurting, but we don't even realize it ourselves. We have put that box of snakes there without even knowing it. So we have to acknowledge to ourselves and our spouses that we are hurt.

Next we have to ask ourselves if we have a legitimate reason for being hurt. Did our spouse do something that they knew would hurt you or did they accidentally do it? These two scenarios have different action points. If they did something they knew would hurt you then you have to talk to them about why they did it. Open communication between the both of you is a must if you ever expect to have a good marriage. Sometimes their answer may hurt more than what they did, but it needs to be out there. Hopefully, they won't try to put it all on you and what you have done, but sometimes that does happen. If that does happen then you need to acknowledge your role in what happened, but they need to take responsibility for what they did as well.

If they accidentally hurt you or they didn't even know they did, then that takes more of a look at yourself. Why are you hurt? Is it an ego thing? Is it a selfish thing? Is it some childhood trauma that it reminded of? Why are you hurt? Getting to the root of why it hurt you will help you work through the process and you can work on yourself here and hopefully fix improve whatever brought you to that point. Depending on the reason you are hurt, you may need counselling to get through it or you may just need to grow up and get over yourself.

After you get to the why of the hurt, the best thing to do is to pray about it. You should actually pray about it as you go through each step, but here specifically you need to pray to ask God to help you through the hurt. God is great at taking that box of snakes and getting rid of them if you will only ask. He can throw it far away from you and make it easier to get close to each other again. The important thing here though is we can go back looking for that box to pick it up again. During an especially hard point in my marriage I would pray daily for God to get me past the hurt and each day he would say "Let me take it from you Bethany.", but by each evening I had gone back in search of my box of snakes. It was like I enjoyed having that pain there. I wanted my husband, but I had rather reach toward him over that box of snakes rather than getting rid of it all together and getting as close to him as possible.

Finally, we need to strive for that intimacy with our spouse again. Intimacy is not just about sex, although that is an important part of it. It is about the closeness between you and your spouse. Do you ever touch your spouse and not feel like they are there? I know I do. We can talk or hold hands and it is like he is not really there. Now I can ignore it and do my best to get past it or I can acknowledge it and do something about it. Maybe we have not had quality time in awhile. Maybe we need a date that is not just watching a movie where all we do is sit in a theater and focus on something else besides each other. Or maybe one or both of us is trying to put that box of snakes back between us.

If you can't keep the box of snakes from between you, eventually one or both of you is going to get filled with so much venom that there is nothing that can get it out. Don't let that happen. Trust me there is much more pain there than you will ever feel from a hurt in your marriage.

Forgive them, get rid of the box and don't pick it back up.