By Jeff Cohen, freelance writer (cohenwriting@aol.com)
If you’ve been anywhere near a television lately, or even a copy of People Magazine, then you can’t help but see or read about the TomKat wedding. Yes, it’s officially true, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes tied the knot in Italy. Looking at the photos released by the couple, they are a picture of marital bliss.
Now, here’s the funny part. If you flash back a few months, the media made TomKat look like anything but a happy couple. Some magazines reported Katie wanted out of a suffocating relationship. Others went so far as to claim little baby Suri was never actually born. They actually reported that the whole thing was just a publicity stunt to revive Tom’s career.
So why do I bring up this whole ebb and flow of the TomKat romance? For one simple reason. It’s not worth believing everything you read when it comes to celebrity couples. You never really know what’s going on inside a relationship. So how does this apply to everyday couples? Well, it’s easy to look at another couple, say your friend and their partner, and think they seem so much happier than you. Or you may witness one fight and believe the whole relationship is on the rocks. The reality is that unless someone confides in you about the state of their relationship, you really have no idea whether or no they’re truly happy.
Let’s get even more specific now and ask the next obvious question. What can you take away from other couples to incorporate into your own relationship? The best place to start is with factual things you want to emulate in another couple. Three examples might include:
Let’s say the couple makes a point of going away for their honeymoon every year. You can certainly decide to do the same with your relationship.
Perhaps the couple has found a great financial advisor to manage their money. You can definitely take the referral and make an appointment to improve your rate of return.
Maybe the couple hosts their entire family every year around the holidays. You can make the same effort to bring your loved ones together for Thanksgiving, Chanukah, or Christmas.
The idea is that these are three fact-based examples. It gets trickier when you try to incorporate things based on how a couple portrays themselves around others. Saying something like “we should fight a lot less, like Sally and Michael” is a risky comment. Do you really fight more than Sally and Michael or do they just do a better job hiding their personal relationship around others?
So remember, if the media can spin a relationship to look bad or good, so can an everyday couple. Just because you witness a couple of isolated incidents it really doesn’t define the couple or determine their ultimate fate in lasting over time.
You’ll do much better spending less time comparing yourselves to other couples and more time simply working on what would make the two of you happy. That’s how you build a relationship that can last a lifetime.
Jeff Cohen is the author of the e-book, 30 Minute Guide to Online Dating. It's a must-read for anyone looking to master the art of online dating without wasting hours of valuable time. To learn more about the e-book and purchase a copy, please visit Online Dating eBook.
