Happily ever after is built on struggle, not happiness

​I have said that if I am ever in a relationship again, it will be built on the foundation of struggling-ever-after far more than happily-ever- after. Mainly because it turns out that happily ever after is a myth; happily ever after is a pre-requisite built on a lie.

I will own that when I talk about relationships, I feel like an imposter. Relationships have never been my strong suit.

I will also suggest, though, that the things I feel like I have the most subject matter expertise in all come from things in my life that have broken and I've had to figure out how to put them back together.

I'm doing that these days with my historically broken relationship patterns.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a good friend. We got to talking about marriage. And he said something to me that I still reflect on a lot. He said he and his wife, whom I adore and consider an equally great friend, have a vanilla marriage.

When you read that, you might think he was complaining, that he was somehow wanting for more. Turns out, though, that couldn't be further from the truth.

As he described vanilla, he described two people having the space to pursue their own interests and goals in life without feeling the pressure to display a picture of what the world would call a flavorful marriage. He described giving each other space to be the individuals they each long to become, while cheerleading the heck out of each other on their way to becoming those individuals.

And then he said this. He said they are at their best when life gets hard. When difficulties come along, he said, there is no one on earth besides her that he would want to tackle them with.

I have tried to imagine that, just how beautiful and secure that must feel. Not just being with someone you know you CAN navigate the hardest challenges of life with, but with someone you WANT to navigate them with.

Many pictures of relationships, whether they are marriages or family or friendships, start with images of waltzing together through the cool parts of life. The fun and the glamourous parts, the flavorful.

But then life gets hard. And maybe you come to discover you are not at your best when you're navigating that hard stuff together. Being drawn to one another by the sprinkles and vast flavors of life doesn't naturally translate to being drawn to one another when life loses its flavor. When the flavors become bitter and hard to taste. When being drawn starts to look and feel more like isolation.

Nobody wants life to lose its flavor. Nobody wants life to get hard and difficult. Nobody does. But life doesn't often care what you want.

It gets hard anyway.

Then it doesn't matter whether you wanted it to get hard or not. What matters is if you are beside the person or the people in your life you want to do that hard with; the person and the people who have demonstrated they want to do hard with you.

There are very few people we can't navigate the easy parts of life with. Maybe the more challenging find is finding the people we want to navigate the hard parts with.

I don't know what the answer to that is. At least not personally, because again, I am hardly the expert. But I think it starts with ditching the assumption of - and maybe even the desire for - happily ever after.

I think it starts with assuming happily ever after is a fairy tale, and hardships and challenges are a reality. And then looking at the person beside you and asking, is this who I want to tackle reality with. Is this who - more than anyone else.

If the answer is yes, then you like my buddy are incredibly blessed.

Because when you get to a place - and to a person in life - where you are at your best when life gets hard. You've reached a great place.

Great places aren't always defined by happiness; frequently they are defined by being with the one who doesn't require happiness to make a place feel great. Someone who makes you feel safe enough to ease that expectation of yourself.

And so maybe, just maybe, happily ever after isn't a myth after all. Maybe the myth is that happily ever after is built on happiness. And maybe it's actually found in the people who don't allow each other to give up on happy at the first sign of unhappiness.

The people who are your people.

The people who are, indeed, sometimes hard to find.

(Re-written from an article I wrote October 13, 2022).