Life is full of lessons, but one of the greatest is the recognition that you can continue to learn without limit.
Perhaps you didn't realize it, but over your lifetime you will continue to discover more about how life works, how the people around you work, and how yourself works in your interaction with others.
As I said, learning is continual, and this is specially so when it involves your relationships with other people.
One of the most important relationships we will ever have is our marriage.
It may not be the very most important of life's relationships, but will have the greatest impact on your life depending on the marriage's success or failure.
To be able to successfully make your way through married life requires a number of crucial skills.
There are couples out there who like to claim their marriage is nothing short of "made in heaven".
They never argue and fight; they never have differences or disagreements.
Simply not true.
As we each grow and mature, we are required to learn how to deal with life's lessons in different ways because we are each different and look at things from different perspectives.
Being able to navigate around challenges and interact with each other at the same time is one of the most exciting things about marriage.
Everyone faces challenges in this way, and to claim otherwise is to admit they have never really lived.
In a marriage these challenges can be either a negative or positive experience, it just depends how well each spouse recognizes that you have different ways of looking at things and are willing to deal with all of them.
There are bound to be disagreements in a marriage, and there are several choices to deal with them.
One partner could just back down giving the other partner the chance to express their point.
A second choice would be not to back down, rather to make a challenge to their assertion and try to determine if it is correct.
A third option would be to discuss both opinions to see if there is any flexibility for reaching a conclusion.
It could well be that you are both correct.
Or, one of you might be correct, and the other one wrong.
An open discussion should help to determine this.
Resolving disagreements requires an understanding of the aspects of the disagreement.
Put another way, you need to know the facts.
Then you must have a plan to move forward toward a resolution.
Make sure the plan is realistic.
Break the plan down into measurable steps, write it down and come back often to check your progress.
Have you reached your goal, or are you making a little progress, or are you stalemated? Its important to recognize that life is a process of always learning.
Along the way we find new means of understanding each other.
We find new ways of enjoying each other and ourselves as well.
You need to think of the challenges that confront your marriage as an opportunity to grow and have a better understanding of your spouse..
Moving ahead, you will need to identify any lessons that you both should learn.
In marriage we are called into a continual evolution, a process of adoring.
The task to most unions, good and bad, is to find new means of adoring each other.
If you have been married one year, a decade or forty years, the challenge remains the same.
Grow in love together.