FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON!

I came across an article in the internet by Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J.  The article quite struck me because it spoke of the realities of life.  Indeed, when someone is about to get married, the question that comes to mind is "Am I marrying the right person?".  According to Fr. Arrupe, every relationship has a cycle.  At first, you fell in love with your spouse.  You anticipate his calls, welcomes his touch, laugh at his crazy jokes and even gets angry whenever he fails to text or give you a call during the day.  As days go by, the euphoria of love begins to fade.  You now get annoyed by his calls, his touch not even welcome at times & the crazy jokes you used to laugh at, now irritate you.  Suddenly, you recall the sweet moments you spent together with your spouse and now begin to desire those experiences with someone else.  This is the time when marriage starts to break down.  You now begin to see your spouse's imperfections and blame him for your misery.  Some look for fulfillment by resorting to sports, career or religion but the most common is infidelity.  During the initial stage, the new relationship with another man or woman seems satisfying but again, during the later stage, you also experience the same problem you had with your spouse before and the same cycle repeats.  Why? Simply because, you are trying to find a solution to your problem outside marriage when you should be looking for a solution within marriage.  Marriage, unlike falling in love which just comes naturally, needs to be nurtured.  Falling in love is easy because you just feel it happen to you but sustaining that love is very hard.  Just like any recipe, it needs the proper ingredients for it to become tasty & delicious.  Love and relationships need nurturing.  Both spouses need to work it out together to keep that flame burning.  Therefore, "the key to succeeding in marriage is not finding the right person, its learning to love the person you found.".