It is your child’s birthday.  You have purchased a new bike that he has been talking and dreaming about non-stop.  But first you bring out his favorite cake with candles lit and ready for him to blow out.  He proclaims, “I love this kind of cake.  Thank you.  This is great!”  You respond with, “You’re welcome but the best is yet to come!”

We have experienced this with gifts, vacations, and maybe even aspects of our jobs – but how about in our marriages?  Far too often, I sit with couples who have been married 10, 15, even 20 years as they talk about their marriage as though it is a past event.  Discussing how they met, or the excitement and intensity of their love in those early years seems but a distant memory.  Truly they get stuck in thinking that goes – “It was wonderful then, it is awful now, and it can never get any better.”

But what if the best is yet to come?  Regardless of the difficulties you have experienced – critical words, betrayal, even unfaithfulness – where you are right now is not where you have to remain.  I have witnessed couples recover from the most horrific of experiences to find themselves in the best place they have been in 20 years.  But in order to do this, they first had to pry themselves out of their “this is good as it gets” mentality.  Couples who have found happiness and fulfillment with their spouse have been able to adopt a mindset of, “the best is yet to come.”  While I am not suggesting that some kind of “Pollyannish” perspective will make the world right, I do believe that a “best is yet to come” focus opens the door to possibilities.

If you believe that the “highs” of your marriage are all behind you, which is quite depressing, my tip for you this Valentine’s Day is to turn your gaze from the rear view mirror in your relationship to a forward focus out the windshield and consider what “best” just might lie ahead.