differences

How to Fight the Good Fight

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Some of my favorite movies (much to my wife’s dismay) are “The Matrix” trilogy of movies. They never get old to me. I can watch them over and over and still find new thing in them that I didn’t see before.

This happened a while back when I was watching “The Matrix Reloaded (2003). In this movie, the hero (Neo) has been summoned by someone who is supposedly on Neo’s side…Seraph. But when Neo gets there, Seraph begins to fight with him. When the fight is over, Neo asks Seraph why, and Seraph replies, “You do not truly know someone until you fight them.”

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Expectations – What’s in the Box?

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It all started when my wife went to the front door and came back with the latest delivery from FedEx. “What’s in the box?” I inquired. “I’m not sure,” she said with a hint of excitement in her voice. Since my wife doesn’t typically get excited about things, I began to get curious.

As she went to find something with which to open the box, I thought to my self, “Wouldn’t it be cool if she surprised me by ordered something from Victoria Secrets?” The voice in my head immediately said, “Yeah, right! Be reasonable!” My head knew it was improbable, but my heart was holding out for the long-shot.

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Have You Overlooked Something?

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In many areas of life, it’s not good to overlook things. If you overlook the traffic light turning red, you could have a serious accident. If you overlook a sponge when sowing up your patient, you could be looking at a serious lawsuit. And if you overlook the door signs when going to a public restroom, you could be facing some serious embarrassment. (Yes, I’ve done that, and I would rather not talk about it.)

But when it comes to marriage, it can actually be helpful to overlook some things.

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How to Improve Your Marriage Pictures

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We’ve all had our share of bad photos. Think back to your fashion-questionable high school days, or those family portraits that looked more like the Adams Family than a happy family. It’s safe to say we all have pictures we would like to delete from the archives.

The other day, I came across The 50 Weirdest Engagement Portraits Of All Time. It’s just what it says…50 very weird engagement photos. They are painful to look at and they leave you asking, “What were they thinking?”

All this got me wondering, “What would pictures of my marriage look like over the years?”

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Movie Disagreement Disorder

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a bucket of popcorn with two cinema ticketsI’m a Star Wars husband married to a Lifetime movie wife.  This weekend, TNT ran a back-to-back Star Wars marathon. I was ecstatic. My wife…not so much.

When I got married, I didn’t realize our marriage would suffer from MDD…Movie Disagreement Disorder. It’s a very common disorder, found in most marriages.

Some of the symptoms of MDD are:

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Marriage Is Like A Dented Fender

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A few weeks ago, I had a fender bender coming home from work. It was a very minor fender bender. No one was hurt. There was only a small amount of damage to my car and no damage to the other car. We didn’t even have to call the police.

I was glad that the damage was so minor, but my car had been in pristine condition up until this point. Now there was this dent in the front of my car for everyone to see.

I became a little OCD about it. Every time I walked to my car, I would stop and look at the dent. When I went into the garage to get something, I would look at it. I was beginning to fixate on the dent.

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Did I Marry the Right One?

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Did I marry “the right one?” There can be times in marriage when that question races across your mind like a streaker running across a football field. It can happen when you’re having that same old fight for the umpteenth time. It can happen when the two of you disagree on what’s fun and what’s boring. It can happen when your goals for the future don’t line up. It can happen when the differences between you and your spouse has you grinding your teeth.

It’s during these out-of-sync-times that spouses begin to wonder, “Did I marry the right one?” For some couples, the longer they’re married the more the question pops up. They try to beat the question back, as if they were playing a game of marital whack-a-mole, but no matter what they do, the question keeps coming up. 

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Wanna Trade?

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13 SU1HXzYzNTIuanBnDid you ever do any school lunch trading when you were a kid?  You know…you look in the lunch bag your mom packed and you find something you really don’t want.  Something you would like to trade for something else.

Marriage can be that way.  A few years into your marriage, you can find things in the marriage bag you didn’t really want.  Things you wish you could trade for something else.

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Different Styles in Movies and Marriage

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Chick FlickMy spouse and I differ in a lot of ways, but there’s one very big difference between us.  It’s not related to money, or sex, or kids, or in-laws.  It’s much more serious.  It’s about super hero movies vs Hallmark  movies.  This difference has been there from the day we got married, and it produces groans and eye-rolling to this day.  What do you do when this happens?

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This Isn’t the Spouse I Wanted!

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Balda_Temp“What happened to the person I married?”  “Where did that person go?”  “I want that person back.”  This is not the person I thought I was marrying.”  “This isn’t the spouse I wanted!”

Most people who have been married for any length of time have thought these things, even if they weren’t brave enough to say them out loud. It’s like you’re the victim of a bait and switch.  You thought you were getting one person and instead you got another.

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