Giving Up

Giving up can be really easy sometimes, you want to throw in the towel, give in, quit, start something new, start fresh.

Everything at some point loses its luster.  New jobs become not so new anymore, cars lose their “new car” smell, clothes become old, our phone needs replacing, and sometimes in our relationships they grow cold.

A lot of people contribute relationships growing cold to just being “incompatible” anymore.  Or just being “too different”.  It’s startling to me how often I hear this.

I don’t think it’s ever a matter of being “incompatible” but rather an issue of being “unwilling”.

Think back for a minute.  How different were you when you got married?  I can look back three and a half years and I barely recognize who I was then.  That’s part of life.  Both my wife and I have changed drastically over the past few years, our interests have changed, dreams, goals, feelings.  All these things change and will continue to change over the course of our lives….and this is a good thing.

Life  happens and you grow as a person and you grow as a couple.

But what happens is that change comes and shakes things up, and it can feel uncomfortable and alarming at first.  People say how they didn’t sign up for this or that…..beg your pardon but yeah you did when you made a vow.

Let’s say Target never got any new inventory and instead they only sold the same stuff as the day they opened, old movies, old clothes, old food, out of date everything.

Would you want to shop there?  No.  We have to change, and we have to be okay with our spouses changing….it’s life.

And where the true break down occurs, is people simply get lazy.  They stop trying to make their relationship work, they stop trying to understand their spouse, stop asking questions, until the relationship grows cold and stale, and then you hear stuff like, “we just grew apart,” duh?  You intentionally grew apart, it’s not like you just woke up one morning and everything changed…nothing happens that way, everything is a slow methodical process.

So what’s the answer to all this?  Don’t give up.  Don’t quit, don’t get lazy.

Work your butt off just like in anything else and the results will astound you.