Letter From an Old Hand to a New Bride

Dear Chelsea and Charlie,

You asked about advice and thoughts about marriage as you begin your new adventure. With 28 years of marriage under my belt (and Art’s), I’d say 2 things have made a difference in our lives: may you know them immediately and not have to learn them:

LOVE, Aunt Kris

1.Love self-multiplies. Give 100% of your Love to each other. You can give 100% of your Love to your spouse and still have 100% left over for your children and 100% for your parents and brother and sister and even 100% for every friend and all of humanity.
Letting that Love be unconditional is NOT hard – bringing to consciousness that this is the solution is sometimes illusive…

2. Know that each of you can be your very best only when you allow the other to be themselves. Though it may not seem like it in this blush of new Love, you will get wildly angry at each other once in a while and wish they didn’t have that irritating trait. YET, you can still Love them 100% and that Love will correct your own error in perception that is making this a problem.
No force can do that but Love.

Simply Love them all-out in the guise of “may they be the best they can be.”

I remember an interview with Billy Graham’s wife: asked if in some 70 years of marriage she had ever contemplated divorce, she replied “Divorce no, Murder, yes”. FUN!

Also, the “ancient” movie “Love Story” had a famously disputed quote that said “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”. From a temporal view this seems ridiculous, we must forgive and we must understand when we need to be apologetic, BUT in this movie, as often in life, it was Love that made the declaration and Love that did not need the declaration, because in True Love there is no error, only a perception of error that, overlooked, becomes truly forgiven, not just a memory that one is willing to sacrificially forgive.

If in the face of an urge to fight you just LAUGH – you’ll never imagine how fast anger can subside…

May your life together be all the adventure you hope it can be.