Does your marriage still hold adventure for you? Are you two still exploring the territory of your marriage?
Let me pose a thought: we cannot fully explore all our marriage territory in a lifetime together.
YOUR VAST MARRIAGE TERRITORY
Your marriage compares to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. How? Well, the 828,00 square mile Louisiana Territory doubled the size of the United States. President Jefferson promptly sent Lewis and Clark to explore the territory and map a passage from the Mississippi River to the west coast. They spent 2-year, 4-month exploring from St. Louis to the northwest coast but covered only a portion of the vast territory.
Likewise, your union created a vast and complex relational territory. Do you remember during your courtship the hours you two spent talking? You were mapping relational domains. You were getting to know “the lay of the land.” The more you explored, the better you liked each other. The more you shared during your courtship, the better your marriage.
After a few years, we often feel comfortable together and cease exploration. Like Lewis and Clark, after seeing some of the highlights and navigating some rivers and mountains, we think we know our partner. We fool ourselves if we think we know our spouse after a few years. Good reasons exist to keep exploring.
THE EXPLORATION MUST CONTINUE
Consider these reasons for continuing to map your marriage territory. Life is not static. We live dynamic lives. At least three forces bear on our lives that mold us.
- We change in the seasons of life. First, each person passes through different seasons of life. We develop from infancy to senior adulthood. We pass through various stages, which I’ve experienced as seasons. Each season poses its own challenges. How we meet those “seasonal” challenges adjusts our life accordingly. (One example, Erik Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development.) So, the longer we live together, the more of those seasons we pass through, and the more changes occur in our values and perspectives. We need to explore those together.
- We change with the responsibilities of life. Akin to the seasons, changes in responsibilities create changes in relationships. Each child born to a couple changes the dynamics of all the family members. A wife and husband lose spontaneity with the first child. Many fewer unplanned trips to a restaurant or the movie theater. The couple’s intimate life takes a big hit because of the time and energy required by the newest family member.
Each new educational venture and each new job or promotion complicates the couple’s life. All these welcomed additions exact more time and energy. Each draws attention away from the other.
If couples don’t explore these changes together, they risk losing close connection. Good reason to continue mapping the changing marriage territory. - We change from the “quakes” experienced. Finally, along the way, most couples experience a relation-quake. It may be something like an unwelcome medical diagnosis, or the loss of a loved one, or downsizing from a job, or a severe auto accident. Events like these shake the foundations of marriage. Relation-quakes often reshape our marriage’s terrain the way earthquakes sometimes change a river’s flow.
What we explored and mapped earlier needs re-exploration and remapping.
What territory remains unexplored in your beloved’s life? How often do you explore the new season of life with your mate to so how they are doing? What adjustments have you made because of a new child in the family? What changes loom with one of your children leaving the nest? What does empty nest life look like? Retirement? Grandchildren? Each of these couple seasons nudges our relationship in a different direction. You have new territory or a new lay of the land to explore.
Time to grab your relational compass- your unchanging values- and strike out together!