Green Heart Guidance
  • Home
  • About Elizabeth
  • Specialties
    • Healing Trauma, Abuse and Loss
    • Health Challenges and Chronic Illness
    • Pregnancy and Infant Loss
    • Healing Messages
    • Pet Services
    • Remote Home Viewings
    • Green Living
    • Organic Eating and Food Sensitivities
  • Guidance
    • Consultation Fees
    • Classes
    • CEU Seminars
    • Client Forms >
      • Liability Form
      • Policies and Procedures Agreement
      • New Client Information
      • New Pet Client Information
      • Bereavement Questionnaire
    • Payment Options
  • Blog
  • Contact Me

Marrying Your Best Friend

7/17/2015

0 Comments

 
Marrying Your Best Friend by Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.
Conventional wisdom states that in order to have a happy marriage, you should marry your best friend. A Google search of that phrase turns up quite a few articles, studies and blog posts confirming this very notion. Yet I discovered the hard way that marrying one’s best friend is not a guaranteed way to a create a lifelong recipe for happiness. In my case, it led to disappointment and divorce.

My ex-husband and I began dating when I was very young: I was 14 years, 8 months and a sophomore in high school; he had just turned 17 and was a junior. We had been friends for the year prior, but then suddenly Cupid’s arrow hit us and we saw each other in a very different light. Our friendship blossomed into romance, our first and only romantic relationship for both of us until the time when we separated 22 years later. We both thought we had found our “forever” person.

After five plus of dating but before our wedding, I had the distinct thought that I was settling in my choice of marriage partner. My fiancé was a wonderful man: smart, caring, and loving. I knew he wouldn’t physical abuse me, and he would be a good provider. I was sure he would make a great dad, and that was very important to me. He was my best friend, yet I also knew that in marrying him, I was giving up any chance of having romance in my life. My ex was not a romantic person. I’m not an over-the-top romantic, but I am a woman who appreciates having her birthday acknowledged or occasionally having flowers or a new book given to her. I also knew that the passion between us was more than lacking at times. Yet when I looked at the whole picture of whom he was, I thought that sacrificing romance and passion was a small price to pay for marrying my best friend. It was, after all, what common advice dictated.

It turns out that wasn’t true. I needed romance and passion in my lifelong relationship with my partner. I needed friendship, to be certain, but I also needed more. I needed someone who would also cherish me as a woman. As the years passed, this need became more important rather than less, and I began to realize how much was actually missing from my marriage.

The time right after my ex-husband and I separated was the best our relationship had seen in a long time. We occasionally began talking on occasion, and we started to find our friendship again. What we came to realize was that we made far better friends than lovers. In the case of popular advice, our relationship was not the norm: marrying our best friend resulted in us also losing our best friend. Our relationship was better as a friendship rather than a romance. That doesn’t in any way deny the romantic feelings we had for each other. However, it does break with conventional wisdom.

A year after our divorce finalized, I am far happier as a divorced woman than I could ever have imagined. I never dreamed my marriage would end, but I am grateful it did. Staying in a relationship that was no longer even a friendship was not a healthy option for either of us.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Join our newsletter list

    Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.

    Holistic Life Coach and
    Intuitive Energy Healer

    Categories

    All
    Abuse
    Announcements
    Body
    Body Mind Spirit
    Chronic Illness
    Crystals
    Death
    Disabilities
    Family
    Gender
    General Guidance
    Green Living
    Helping Others
    Holidays
    Infant Loss
    Inspirational Mantras
    Lyme
    Marriage And Divorce
    Meditation
    Metaphysical Gifts
    Mind
    Multiple Chemical Sensitivities
    Narcissism
    Natural Healing
    Nutrition
    Parenting
    Past Lives
    Personal Growth
    Pets
    Popular Culture
    Pregnancy And Childbirth
    Product Recommendations
    Reviews
    Sexuality
    Spirit
    Spirituality And Religion
    Stress Release
    Subsequent Pregnancy After A Loss
    The Other Side
    The Single Life
    Trauma
    World Events

    Archives

    January 2023
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    November 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

    RSS Feed

Services

Green Living
Healing Messages and Intuitive Energy Work
Health Challenges and Chronic Illness
Organic Eating and Food Sensitivities
Pet Psychic Services
Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Remote Home Viewing

About Green Heart Guidance

About Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.
Contact Elizabeth
Consultation Fees
Client Forms

Social Media

​Facebook
Flickr
Goodreads
Instagram

LinkedIn
Pinterest
Spotify
Twitter
Youtube
Subscribe to GHG's Newsletter