You look at your husband or wife one day - usually after the relationship has lasted awhile - and you think
"So this is who this person really is. These quirks. These opinions, so different from mine. These thought patterns and emotions. These unchanging habits. These imperfections. This person can't - and never will - totally understand me. This person can't - and never will - totally love me."
It can be as if blinders have come off of our eyes. We wonder why we never saw this before: we did not marry Super Man or Wonder Woman.
This is a crucial moment. Because now we have a choice.
We can choose to realistically accept and love our spouse as the lovable but limited and imperfect person whom he or she is. Accept with humility the precious free gift of his/her fallible love.
Or we can be an absolute and unrealistic perfectionist and choose to discard the relationship, discard the marriage, and move on restlessly to the next person. Who will eventually disillusion us as much as our first spouse did.
Part of maturing is realizing that no spouse can ever give us total understanding and total unconditional love. Part of maturing is realizing that we can't give this to another person either. Total understanding and total unconditional love is the province of God. Only our relationship with God can give this depth of understanding and love to us. No human being can.
Which is why this aha moment is a very crucial moment in a relationship. God is at work in this moment, calling us to grow up. To cease to expect the impossible of others. To cease making this one relationship the end-all and be-all of our existence. Now God calls us to begin to daily turn our gaze to God, our Eternal Lover, to pour out our minds and hearts to Him, to receive comfort and courage from Him, to build our relationship with the One Who will love us for eternity. To praise and give thanks to the One Who created us and holds us in being every moment.
Then as God pours His love into our hearts and souls, we can be nourished by His love and pour it over our spouse. This is why God is the Center of a marriage. God gives His free total understanding and total unconditional love to each of the spouses so that in turn each is healed, consoled, and empowered enough to love the other more deeply and unreservedly.
When we pray daily for our spouse, we can ask God to help us see him/her through God's eyes and with God's heart. Yes, we will see the other's limits and faults. But we will also become more sensitive to how hard the other works to love us, to be faithful, to communicate, to understand. And we will be filled with profound gratitude that this person has freely chosen to live with us, who are also so imperfect and fallible, and just as incapable of giving total understanding and total unconditional love.
When we pray for our spouse through God's eyes, with God's heart, how gentle we become. How tender. How careful with the other's fragile psyche. We become much more patient. We recognize our Holy Disillusionment as a Gift, because now we can understand and accept the limits of our human nature and the limitlessness of God's Divine Nature. We know that as husband and wife we stand before Him with clasped hands, asking Him to grace us so we become more merciful, less judgmental. Slower to find fault. Quicker to offer forgiveness. Less compulsive about pointing out the other's failings. More compassionate and grateful while pointing out the other's small sacrifices for us and for our family.
Nobody ever marries Super Man or Wonder Woman. But with God's help and daily prayer, a dose of reality and humility, we can build a Super marriage. And that's an everlasting and blessed Wonder!