Last week I met up with a friend who I had not seen in over ten years. We filled each other in on our lives since that time which included talking about our current relationships. She told me in no uncertain terms that her husband is not the same man she married. While this is a common thing for people to say about their spouses (something along the lines of "I don't know who they are anymore"), in her case, she really meant it. After getting married, her husband completely changed his religious beliefs in a far more conservative direction and it's impacted every aspect of their marriage and life together. It was a big and sudden change. She's faced with a huge question: now what? 

The truth is that when you agree to marry someone, you're agreeing to marry someone you don't know. You don't know who that person is going to be in a year, 5 years, 30 years - and you're taking that plunge anyways. There was no way my friend could have foreseen her husband making a change of this magnitude (and wanting her to make the same change with him). Sure, there are little changes that happen to nearly everyone (fashion choices, hairstyles, eating habits and weight gain or loss, etc.). There may be some medium changes thrown in (moving, changing jobs, acquiring new hobbies or different friends). But then there are the big changes, the kind that make you call into question everything. These are far harder to weather and include things like changing religious or political beliefs drastically, total lifestyle shifts, and tragedies that change the course of life as you knew it (think about your spouse becoming a quadriplegic after an accident or losing everything both of you had in a natural disaster). Some marriages - most marriages - never face those types of changes. And I can guarantee that even though we recite "in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad" in our vows - most people are not really anticipating that those vows will ever be tested to that degree.

Now you may be reading this and realizing the irony because I recently became engaged (as I mentioned in my last blog post). How ludicrous must I be to in one paragraph say "you don't know the person you're marrying" and yet here I am preparing to do exactly that? My marriage is not different from anyone else's. I am not immune to something happening in my marriage as shocking as what happened with my friend and her husband. It can happen to anybody. So...why do it? And can you protect against it? Is there some way to magically "know" that the person you're marrying isn't going to completely turn into someone you can't live with anymore? I have answers to the first two questions (which I'll answer in a minute) but the answer to the third question is a resounding no. Life is way too unpredictable and it's a risk that is taken every time we enter into a relationship with anybody. 

Because the reality is that this is not just romantic relationships where this happens. It happens in friendships and family relationships too where one (or both) people change...a lot. While lots of other things can end relationships, most people have had at least one relationship where you just became too different and you didn't like who the other person was anymore. We enter into all types of relationships for connection and closeness. We enter into marriage for those same reasons and many more. The possibility for lifelong connection can seem well worth it to take the risk and that's why people do it (especially if they have seen relatively happy marriages around them, they're likely to assume the risk of devastation is relatively low). 

As for how to protect against it? Well, you can't change the person you're with and you can't predict what changes they may make over the course of their life. Just because you like them in this moment doesn't mean you're going to like them forever. But if there's two main things I can recommend doing or looking for, it's these: first, talk about the future and second, tune in to how willing the person you're with is to work on themselves. Have an idea of shared future goals and know what you both really value at your core. If that starts to go off-track, remind your partner of it and see if those are still goals they want with you. If they do still want those same things, there may be some hope. If the person you're with is often not willing to take responsibility for their actions during difficult conversations or they are not actively working on making themselves better, this is a red flag. One of the most attractive things to me about my fiance is that he's been in therapy for years and finds huge benefit from it. When you have two people in a relationship who are both willing to work on themselves and their personal problems, it likely means they're going to be willing to work on relationship problems. That makes it much more likely that as changes take place for each of you as individuals and within your relationship, you'll get through it because you'll work on it. 

The bottom line is that life changes all the time and we change too. There is a reason why half of all marriages end in divorce: they couldn't cope with the changes of life or within each other. It became too much. Safeguard your relationship by having consistent conversations about shared goals and by striving towards growth in your own life and your relationship. That can make all the difference.