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Many Things Go Into a Relationship, But This One Tops Them All
From San Juan ultimatums to Paris alone: Lessons from 47 years together.
The friend I was having coffee with had just gotten married. He was still in the honeymoon phase, and the grin on his face was the grin of a man who hadn’t yet experienced colicky babies or financial woes.
When he discovered I’d been married 47 years, he said, “If you could give me just one piece of marriage advice, what would it be?”
I didn’t have to think twice before blurting, “Don’t depend on your partner to make you happy.”
He looked surprised. “I thought that’s why people got married. To make each other happy.”
“Depending on somebody else to make you happy is a recipe for disaster,” I said.
I was telling him something I hadn’t known during my first year of marriage. During that tumultuous time, my new partner and I stumbled through arguments, silent treatment, religious differences, and misunderstandings.
That’s when I discovered that depending on another person to make you happy, to fill those voids and hollow spaces in your life, leads inevitably to disappointment. People don’t make you happy any more than a career change, a new house, or a trip to Tahiti.