Marriage is very different today than it was a hundred years ago. The roles of husband and wife are more unclear, and our society seems to have no set rules for them. Even so, most people have great expectations for romantic satisfaction within marriage, as well as high hopes for healing and personal development. Each partner yearns, consciously or unconsciously, for the other to heal their early childhood wounds, and to love, accept, and cherish them.

Marriage is the melding of two separate individuals’ lives into one. Creating a masterpiece marriage is a rocky road. In the beginning, the heat of romantic passion temporarily blinds you to the difficulties of this feat of alchemy. However, over time, the passion cools and over the years, each of you inevitably change. You find a growing need for self-expressing your individuality. You are not so accommodating. Commonly, you are left with two people who are locked in chronic power struggle because they don’t know how to get the other person to satisfy their new expectations. Resolving the power struggle is crucial to creating a satisfying and mature marriage and ensuring the foundation for a happy family life.

Creating a masterpiece marriage journey is a hero’s and heroine’s journey with many adventures including: the experience of facing your fears, finding courage, discovering mentors, learning new skills, and dying to your old sense of self which feels something like depression before it feels like a new and more vital life. It will take time to go on this adventure, but it is a worthy human endeavor. It promises to transform your experience of love into something much more intense than you could ever imagine.

In our book The Marriage Map and in our classes, Michael and I openly share the experiences of our marriage—the difficult episodes and life transitions that are inevitable in most relationships. Understanding our process for encountering and resolving those experiences in the context of adult development will allow you to reflect on your own life and inspire you to use the challenges in your marriage for improvement and growth in your romantic relationship.

In every marriage, there are issues that create the same fight over and over again. The fight may take different forms and appear in different situations, but it remains the same conflict at the core. Think about your own marriage and your repeated patterns of unhappiness. A deep commitment to resolve those underlying issues in marriage requires each husband and wife to undertake a healing journey as an individual, and a combined healing journey as partners.

The process of creating a masterpiece marriage required us to learn new skills and acquire new abilities, all of which seemed overwhelming at first. Listening to each other was something we had to learn to do—even if it was painful. And these skills include listening without interrupting, making requests nicely, understanding your partner’s childhood wounds, sharing “ouches” before they become upsets.

The hero’s journey is somewhat different for a man and a woman. After a man learns competence, he needs to learn humility. After a woman learns connection, she needs to find her voice. The path of the hero and heroine is not supposed to be a smooth ride. There are no shortcuts. Seeing the world, yourself, and your partner from a bigger perspective is always an intense process of stretching and letting go.

The idea that something should not be happening to us on this journey or that we don’t deserve this emotional pain comes from that part of us that strives to preserve our ego’s limited perspective. This attitude blocks progress on the healing journey. From our point of view as a selfish, self-centered egocentric being, we are constantly being shortchanged, cheated, mistreated, and not valued as highly as we expect. From a bigger perspective, we need to be worked on, cracked, molded, and transformed into a wise and loving being.

The emotional and cognitive development that is stimulated by the conflicts of two personalities in partnership and the simultaneous desire for love and family is both intense and rewarding. It is the catalyst for healing and deepening love. Our purpose is to support your journey so that you fulfill the potential of your marriage.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of CHOICES Magazine