We all compare our relationships – even when we know it’s not good for us.
We judge our own relationships against, well, basically every other couple that walks the earth, wondering if they are more in love/have better sex/are better friends/are more compatible/have what it takes to last for a lifetime.
The comparisons go on and on and on. Endlessly.
Who do you compare your relationship to?
Your annoying Facebook friend with her perfectly curated marriage (“My husband brought me flowers again, third time this week!!!”)?
The perfectly athletic blonde-and-blue-eyed couple next door?
Harry and Megan?
There’s one comparison you’re constantly making — and you don’t even know it.
This may sound crazy, but I bet the couple you compare yourself most to is….Mom and Dad.
As in “Mom and Dad don’t fight over what type of couch to buy for two months, like my fiancé and I are.”
You’re right: your parents do not spend two months arguing over buying a black Italian leather sectional or something slipcovered and shabby chic.
No, they don’t. Now now, after 25+ years.
But back when they were engaged, they had these same fights.
That’s a recipe for disaster.
Because these long-married couples also endured their own black leather/shabby chic, getting-to-know-you and figuring-out-our-way of doing things.
It just happened a long time ago.
If you must compare, make it an apple-to-apple comparison.
If you must compare (we know you’re human; we do too), make it an apple-to-apple comparison: of an engaged couple, in the same stage of relationship, on who you have the inside emotional scoop about what really goes on between them.
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- And steer clear of the curated love.
- Through these fights and over the course of many years of living together, they eventually developed “their” style.
- But don’t forget: there was a time when they were beginners at marriage.
- Just as you are right now, and as you should be.
- Even if you’ve been married before, you know a bit about marriage, but not about being married to this guy.
Don’t compare your relationship to long-established marriages.
