WTF is happily ever after? Have you ever asked yourself what it really means??
The urban dictionary defines it: To find your one and only and live happily with them for the rest of your life. To be constantly happy with no end. Love.
Constantly happy is a myth. There’s no such thing. Individually or in a relationship. Everyone is chasing the myth that if you meet ‘the one’ you’ll live happily ever after. Fairytales have literally screwed up our relationships and what we strive for within them.
Do you realize the movies never show us happily ever after? They simply just say… and they lived happily ever. We imagine in our minds blissful, constantly happy relationships. Every available media source, buys into the myth- hook, line and sinker. Perhaps there is no Darcy or Prince Charming. Those lines in movies are just that: lines in movie. Making real life relationships disappointing.
Relationships can’t live up to the fairytale. Real relationships means having ups and downs. It means moments of blissful love and moments of hate and anger towards one another. It means encountering impasses and looking them straight on, and moving through them- not around them, not avoiding them- through!!! But couples today, once the impasse arises, the words divorce fly off their tongues. WHY?? Where has the commitment to marriage, to each-other, to making it work, through good times and bad gone?
It’s time to grieve the loss & break-up with the myth of the romantic, fairytale fantasy or create a new definition for happily ever after.
Now, before your rebuttal- A relationship should not be filled with hate, rage or violence. If the minute you’re in the same room together a fight erupts. Intimacy is barely existence, you’re emotionally starved. You keep talking but never feel heard, understood. Your children are telling you to stop fighting, questioning if you still love each other. It’s time to seek out a couple’s therapist and take a deep look into your relationship. To understand what’s going on, to see if there’s a solution of repair. Try to repair, before you divorce.
Authentic relationships are about choosing that person everyday, especially the harder days. Stop comparing your partner to the impossible ideal and allow yourself to accept the complete, complex person for whom they are- all the wonderful, annoying, quirky characteristics, that make them, them! Until we can, divorce rates and lonely people who walked away from lovely relationships because they were chasing the fairytale dream of ‘happily ever after’ will continue to rise.