Nobody’s Ready for Marriage
One of my favorite relationship books is “Passionate Marriage” by Dr David Schnarch because of this quote: “Nobody’s ready for marriage. Marriage is what makes you ready for marriage.” It’s in the introduction of the book.
I started reading it a little before I got divorced because I didn’t want to get divorced.
I started reading it a little before I got divorced because I didn’t want to get divorced.
As a therapist, we tend to think we have the skills to avoid marital calamities like divorce.
In my relationship, we had survived unemployment, underemployment & grad school, we could survive infidelity, right?
We could have, if we’d gotten help, if we really wanted to change ourselves and change our relationship to meet both of our needs.
That discussion is a post for another day.
Passionate Marriage was a beginning of more awareness building for me. It was a text that did a lot to me and for me. (Books are why I affectionately call myself the Bookworm Therapist. I believe that I can’t be the only person to go through what I’m going through and someone somewhere else has probably gone through it and ideally writte a book, article, song or poem about it. At least I hope for it with crossed fingers and toes, because the alternative is unsettling to say the least!)
Primarily, it was one of the important first steps I really needed in the continued development of my self and identity as a person. It made me become the wife in my relationship instead of the therapist I’d been operating as for the past 12 years in being connected to the kid’s dad (TKD).
It’s a book primarily about differentiation of self and within relationships. It’s become one of the books I reference in couples work & recommend when working in the family relational space generally.
I’ll share some of my favorite phrases, pages & takeaways in future posts.