Lessons About Marriage Learnt From Riding A Bike

"Marriage relationships are similar to learning to ride a bicycle as a kid." Unwrapping The Gift Marriage is like a gift;the easiest part of marriage relationships is opening it by saying, "I do." I once heard someone say at a ceremony, "The wedding is now over, but the marriage has just begun!" Now that you are in this new chapter of your life, believe it or not, it has just begun. Everytime I'd hop on that bike, I'd make it a few feet and fall off. When I first got married, our relationship seemed this way also. We'd set of on our journey, our differences would clash, and trivial arguments would erupt. You probably know what I mean. Ones like - "why didn't you put the toilet seat down? Where is the cap for the toothpaste? I thought you said you'd take out the trash? blah, blah, blah, blah, Are you listening to me?" As a kid, I really was serious about learning to ride that bike, but a decision had to be made. Was I strong enough to not give up until I could ride?, or was I gonna take the easy way out and say "riding bikes isn't for me!". You've got to make these same decisions after you've said "I do". Will you keep going and work through your differences? Or will you say "let's get a divorce!". Know that all marriage relationships have good and bad days. Great marriages relationships just work at producing more good days than bad ones. "But Paul Doesn't Fall Off..." We often look at other marriage relationships and measure our progress or lack of it based on what other people have or don't have. What's misleading about this is that we base our judgements from what we see on the outside, rather than knowledge from inside their lives. Sadly, we walk away and try to pattern our lives after what we've seen but, not understood. I'll be the first to tell you, watching what Tom and Betsie do, and trying to act out this same thing between you and your mate, will only increase problems in your marriage relationship. Why? simply because you are trying to measure your marriage by someone else's standard. You have a totally different man/women in your life, create your own standards by learning what you both want in your marriage, then work by those standards. If you don't do this, get ready for a long, troublesome, frustrating journey. Pedaling & Balance In riding a bike, you need to learn balance to stay upright, and you need to pedal to move foward in the direction you wish to go. When these two work together, the result is a great breathtaking ride. In marriage relationships, you also need forward, positive momentum, and balance. The wonderful things you do that pleases each other, builds passion and increases attraction (momentum), while learning more about each other and creating an environment for each of you to personally grow, gives balance. Since there are also many things that decreases passion (slows momentum/love busters) and creates imbalance, both of you must constantly work at pedaling and balancing to build a great marriage (great ride). Using Training Wheels Using those training wheels gave me an opportunity to learn how to balance and pedal at the same time. After I'd gotten more comfortable coordinating the two, my dad took the training wheels off and helped me to move without them. As married couples, because this is often new to us, creating balance and building