“Nobody tells you how long marriage is. When you fall in love, when you have fun with somebody, when you enjoy the way they see the world, nobody ever says,

‘This person will change. And so you will be married to two, three, four, five or 10 people throughout the course of your life, as you live out your vows.’

Nobody warns you.”

This passage is from the conclusion of an essay by Lauren Doyle Owens in the New York Times (admission: one of my favorite attempts at indulgent personal time is trying to read the Sunday edition in its entirety every week, with comically tragic results).

The author shares her own story of spending a great deal of time talking herself into all the ways an escape from her marriage might liberate both her and her husband from the endless compromises and sacrifices necessitated by their differences.

Through both clinical and personal experience, I would add that it’s not simply that the person we marry will change but that we will naturally experience an unfolding awareness of the various parts of our partner that might be different from what we thought we were “signing up for.”

Some of these things might be traits or tendencies that we spotted earlier but chose to ignore, assumed would be different over time, or hoped would improve following milestones like marriage or the transition to parenthood.

Other shifts might come from the ways we are faced with the inevitable discrepancy between what we assumed or expected marriage to be and what it turns out to actually be “in the wild.”

The unfolding awareness is to be expected, and is no different from what your neighbors and friends are experiencing (even the outrageously happy ones you witness through the filtered lens of social media)—but what will ultimately be telling is how each person opts to cope with this shift.

Do you feel betrayed and discouraged as these new layers to your partner are revealed?

Does it make you want to hit the reset button and head back out into the world to hunt for your perfect soulmate—the one person who won’t challenge you to compromise or let you down emotionally, sexually, or otherwise?

Yikes. Have you not received the memo on that one?!

Ok, ok, I’ll be the one to break the news:

…that one perfect person who will save you from ever having to grow, accommodate, adapt, or stretch outside of your comfort zone is actually not “out there” and they aren’t lying on the pillow next to yours each night.

If we instead face the fact that in marriage we’ll likely commit to one person who will potentially morph into two, three, ten versions of themselves—some of them perhaps being “people” we would have never enthusiastically married in the first place—how do we deal with this?

It starts with resisting the temptation to feel betrayed by what is actually a very natural evolution of love over time.

This isn’t something that your partner has “done” to you (unless of course you have actually been manipulated or deceived in nefarious ways), but instead the way that long-term love unfolds over time.

My colleague David Schnarch, author of Passionate Marriage, asserts that “Marriage is a people growing machine.” By entering into this union, you will be called upon to face aspects of yourself that need fine-tuning, be called upon to accept and embrace ALL aspects of your chosen lover, and be called upon to speak up and ask for what you need and want as adjustments become necessary…and they WILL become necessary over and over again throughout the years.

For those already fully immersed in this “machine,” what are your current opportunities for growth (if we are to give deep frustrations a more productive and hopeful reframe, which is my job after all)?

Take a thoughtful inventory of your current circumstances, but try one specific shift: resist the temptation to focus your inventory on your partner and their shortcomings and instead ask yourself:

“If marriage is meant to contribute to my personal growth, how can I rise to the occasion?”

Perhaps it involves communicating something that won’t be popular or easily received but needs to be said. (Pro tip: do this with compassion.)

Perhaps it involves accessing a sense of forgiveness for ways that your expectations haven’t been met. (Pro tip: flip the script by acknowledging first the ways you might not be a perfect spouse either.)

Perhaps it involves the need for a sense of curiosity over fear when embracing newly blossoming aspects of your partner’s personality that might initially feel threatening. (Pro tip: make less judgments, ask more questions.)

Let us know how this inventory unfolds for you. We want to hear your reactions to this, your perspective, and what you would add to the picture. Send me a direct email at k.sharky@enlivenchicago.com or leave a comment below, and let’s continue the conversation.