Every engaged couple should, write this down.
Every single person looking for a spouse, every dating couple, every engaged couple, and every married couple – all of you – write this down.
Get a pen.
I’ll wait.
Ok, here it is:
Girls, your significant other – that guy – he’s just a man.
Guys, your significant other – that girl – she’s just a woman.
And no guy or girl is going to fix it all.
There – now you are free to love them for who they are.
I was interviewing my friend Susan Isaacs after her book Angry Conversations with God came out. We were in front of a live audience, and I was reading questions to her off of index cards submitted by the audience. Because so much of her book talks about relational needs, relational fulfillment and unfulfillment, one of the questions asked was whether she believed there was one true love for every person. Susan essentially said no. And she said that with her husband sitting right there in the audience. She said she and her husband believed they were a cherished prize for each other, and they would probably drive any other people mad. But then she said something I thought was wise. She said she had married a guy, and he was just a guy. He wasn’t going to make all her problems go away, because he was just a guy. And that freed her to really love him as a guy, not as an ultimate problem solver. And because her husband believed she was just a girl, he was free to really love her too. Neither needed the other to make everything okay. They were simply content to have good company through life’s conflicts. I thought that was beautiful.
–Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years
