The key to marital bliss is to know your spouse.
C. S. Lewis profoundly commented about life (not just marriage) with something on the order of: “the chance to live life well is all about expectations; if you are anticipating life to be a 5-star-hotel you’ll be disappointed, but if you thought, on the other hand, that life was going to be a reformatory, it isn’t half bad!” (loosely paraphrased).
The same is true of marriage. If you think you are going to ride off into the sunset in the arms of more of “me,” you’ll soon falter on your ride. If, on the other hand, you think you’ll need to “learn” your spouse in depth and then grow in your ability to adapt to him/her, the potential for your ride into the sunset will be sure-footed, long and surprisingly fulfilling.
Remember that the person you marry, no matter what kind of a saint, or Who’s Who he or she is, comes with 200,000 hours of pre-programming that is quantumly different from your own, and was, in fact, hardwired with a given personality, desires and habits that are just as entrenched as your own. It is a great adventure, which yields personal growth in direct proportion to what you put into it—just like with all things that are “hard won”.
1 Peter 3:7 in the KJV version says: “Husbands, dwell with your wife according to knowledge” (of her specifically; the inference here is that every wife is different, so work at gaining a knowledge of how YOURS is! ) The spiritual inference is that the wife will need to gain knowledge of how her husband “works”, “clicks”, “IS”, as well. This dynamic, is, in fact, true for every relationship, that we must learn one another—and love accordingly.
