Ada Calhoun, To Stay Married, Embrace Change; It is unrealistic to expect your spouse to remain the same person you fell in love with. New York Times, Apr 23, 2016 (in the column "Modern Love").
Excerpt in the window of print: Being forever content with a spouse requires finding ways to be happy with versions of that person.
Quote:
"Emotional and physical abuse are clear-cut grounds for divorce, but they aren’t the most common causes of failing marriages, at least the ones I hear about. What’s the more typical villain? Change. Feeling oppressed by change or lack of change; it’s a tale as old as time.
"Nostalgia, which fuels our resentment toward change, is a natural human impulse. And yet being forever content with a spouse, or a street, requires finding ways [which requires efforts, in my view] to be happy with different versions of that person or neighborhood.
"Several long-married people I know have said this exact line: 'I've had at least three marriages. They've just all been with the same person.'
Ada about her first marriage with Nick: We were married, just not very well. The marriage didn't mean much to us, and so when things got rough, we broke up. I had been too immature to know what I was getting into. I thought passion was the most important thing. When my romantic feelings left, I followed them out the door. It was just like any breakup, but with extra paperwork.
"To feel awed by a man I thought I knew completely: It's a shock when that happens after so many years. And a boon.
(b) " 'Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished,' the Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert said in a 2014 TED talk"
When I read what he said in print, I thought he meant evolution. But he is a psychology professor.
(c) "Because I like to fix broken things quickly and shoddily (my husband, Neal, calls my renovation aesthetic 'Little Rascals Clubhouse'), I frequently receive the advice: 'Don't just do something, stand there.' "
(i) The Little Rascals (film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Rascals_(film)
(a 1994 American comedy; Section 1 Plot: [a boy named] Spanky (Travis Tedford) is the president of the 'He-Man Woman Haters Club')
(ii) Don't just do something, stand there/ Quote Investigator, Mar 22, 2014 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/22/stand-there/
("The earliest evidence located by QI was printed in the popular syndicated gossip column of Leonard Lyons in 1945. The phrase was used by an actor and producer named Martin Gabel")
(d) "So now we own a house. We bought furniture, framed pictures and put up a badminton net. We marveled at the change that had come over us. Who were these * * * shuttlecock-batting people we had become?"
shuttlecock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttlecock
("The 'shuttle' part of the name was probably derived from its back-and-forth motion during the game, resembling the shuttle of a loom; the 'cock' part of the name was probably derived from the resemblance of the feathers to those on a cockerel")
(f) Ada and her first husband Nick: "We still fell asleep to 'Politically Incorrect' with our cats at our feet as we always had. * * * Recently, I asked Nick if we could talk. We hadn't spoken in a decade [so the marriage lasted in mid-2000s]. He lives in London now, so we Skyped."
(i) "Politically Incorrect Guide to" (a topic) is a series of books published by conservative Regnery Publishing. See Politically Incorrect Guide -- Trademark Details. https://trademarks.justia.com/78 ... rrect-78324697.html
("Filing Date 2003-11-07")
(ii) Politically Incorrect Guide is abbreviated as PIG.