When Your Spouse Makes a Drastic Life Change

questforthehappymarriage.blogspot.com/2009/01/when-your-spouse-makes-drastic-life.html

For an article I'm writing for CNN.com, I'm seeking bothnationally known relationship experts as well as "real" people totalk about this topic: when the person you married or fell in love with makes adrastic life change. Perhaps she used to love burgers, but then became a strictvegan and now pushes tofu down your throat. Or maybe he was an anything-goeskind of guy, but five years into the marriage became a Scientologist. Or maybeyour wife used to be carefree about the environment, and now she's militantabout recycling *everything*. I'm looking for both the light and serious sideof what happens when you wake up and realize the person you love has changed insignificant ways.

In positive relationships, as individuals within a marriagegrow and develop new interests, hobbies, outlooks on life, religion, etc bothget to live through this change in a positive manner where the change isunderstood and most importantly, appreciated. Obviously, the change is within one of the two and it is important thatthis change not be enforced onto the other, because the change is intended forone, not both. 

Problems, though, occur within the negative relationshipwhen this change is used as a further wedge between the two, a wedge that hadalready been developed with the other unresolved issues within themarriage.  Then it becomes another brickin the path of the destruction of the marriage. 

Then it becomes a, or quite possibly the, issue that finallypushes the couple apart to the point of the thud of complacency within negativemarriages, or divorce.  Then it becomes aproblem. 

What is needed in this situation is to understand andappreciate the changes within the individual. 

For example, if one of the two within a marriage decides tobecome much more religious, then the other partner needs to understand this aspart of the maturing process, and accept and appreciate this change.  The one who has found religion cannot enforcethis change onto the other.  Then itbecomes a wedge in the relationship. 

by Tim Kellis

www.HappyRelationships.com