Fall in love every day.

A very wise woman and friend of mine once shared the secret to her happy marriage.  She said something like this, “Every morning I wake up and fall in love with the man who is beside me.  It’s not the same man I went to sleep with.  For each day, he has grown and changed and it’s my job to recognize him for who he is today, and not to dwell on who he was yesterday. ”

Wow, I’d never heard any relationship advice like that before, and it really made me think about what she was saying.  Each day, she is releasing all the old complaints, problems, annoyances, etc. and is waking up with a clean slate.  Each morning, she is looking at her husband with fresh eyes, to see how he is choosing to express his authentic self today, what aspects of him she might not have noticed before, how he’s grown and changed…

Another happily married friend reminded me recently that there is a powerful second aspect to this relationship advice — and that is to see the divinity within your partner, in other words to look for what is good in him, focus on his best qualities and traits, enjoy and celebrate his wonderfulness.  And to do this each day, with new eyes, looking for his greatest self and really seeing him.

Now here’s the catch:  While it’s possible that this might work if only one person in the relationship does it, it’s not likely.  As you can imagine, it takes both partners opening up each day to the wonder and newness of their spouse/mate, for this to be truly effective. 

Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote in the lyrics to Cinderella, “Do I love you because you’re beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?”  For most people, they fall in love initially because they see the obvious beauty (internal and external) of the other.  And likewise, for most people, they have trouble maintaining that level of enrapturement for their partner over time, simply because they choose to stop seeing that beauty.  (Note: this isn’t always a conscious choice, but it is a choice, nevertheless.)

When you commit to love someone, commit also to focus upon and see their authentic self, their inner beauty, and to really notice who they are becoming (rather than stagnantly seeing who they were when you first met).  When both partners do this every morning, day in and day out, you will see magical transformations occurring in your relationship.

Charles R. Brown said, “The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow.”  What awesome colors are you seeing reflected from your loved one today?