Each one of you also must love his wife …
and the wife must respect her husband.
—Ephesians 5:33
Two things torpedo happiness: 1) wanting something we can’t have; 2) having something we wanted and no longer wanting it.
She was madly in love with him, but not he with her. She was miserable, convinced she could never be happy without him—the agony of wanting something she could not have.
She continued the pursuit, eventually won his love, and they were married.
She wanted to be treated like a queen, but treated him with indifference bordering on disdain.
Five years after the “I dos” her love had turned to loathing and she filed for divorce—the agony of getting what she wanted and finding that she no longer wanted it.
Happy relationships are pretty evenly divided between responsibility and reward.
Consider the costs when
anticipating the rewards.