The wedding day is so full of joy and expectation.  Two people are in love and so excited to spend the rest of their days together.  They vow to love each other through the best of times and the worst of times.  There is nothing they can't conquer.  They look forward to a future traveled hand in hand, love shining in their eyes, joy beaming across their faces.  It is a day of hope, new beginning and romance.  It is a time of planning, wonderment and magic.   So how is it that two people who are so filled with love for each other can turn into people so disappointed, so disenchanted and so frustrated with their lives and with each other?  Where does that love and excitement go?     Truly, we set a lot of expectation on finding love and marrying that perfect person.  We wait a lifetime, and sometimes it can seem like the most important, monumental decision of our lives.  Indeed, it is a life-changing event, so this is understandable.  We depend on our spouse to be there, to take care of our heart and to be the one person in the world we can trust in, rely on and share everything with.  Sometimes we let each other down.  Sometimes we disappoint one another and don't live up to that expectation.  As human beings, no one is immune to this folly.  In all of our relationships, we have to learn to forgive the foibles and then move on.

In marriage, this can seem like an impossible task.  Because we place so much weight on the importance of this union and because we invest so much into that person, we expect so much more of them.  It's easy to overlook a stranger being rude to you because you don't know them or care for them.  When the person you're in love with speaks to you in a hurtful or rude manner, it holds so much more weight.  You expect your spouse to be the one person who wouldn't hurt you.  When they do, however unintentional it was, it can be a crushing blow.  The tendency is to look at marriage as a fairy tale, and the person we enter that union with becomes the hero, the princess or the knight in shining armor.  When the "hero" of our fairy tale fails us, we become disenchanted and disappointed with our unfulfilled dream.  We may even become angry at the person we feel has not met our expectation.