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Some things seem to never change. The sun rises and sets. Dogs chase cats; cats chase birds; birds eats insects and worms. Termites find wood in my house. Ants sneak in here and there, despite my exterminator. And I believe cockroaches will be on earth long after we humans have vacated the planet.

But changes do happen and one of the big areas where that seems to be true is in the relationships between man and woman inside marriage. In the early years, when one feels intense love, changes happen that can even be identified in the human brain. Studies have been done through brain scans that show marked differences in the brain configuration in persons that are in love.

It seems to me that the state of love also causes people to behave in ways that change in time. In the beginning,these couples not only think their partners are the most wonderful human beings on earth, but they admire and accept all their thoughts, their ways, and their behaviors totally.

The brain scan study took their experiment further and studied married couples later on in their relationships, say two or three years down the line. The changes in the brain had diminished if not disappeared altogether; the couples didn’t always think alike on all issues. One of them would like a neighbor; the other couldn’t tolerate that person. One of them would leave their socks on the floor; the other never turned a light off upon leaving a room. The list is long.

But we’re still in the early years, so no one says anything to the other. They just swallow the irritation and bring themselves back to the warm feeling that is still working in the early years.

Let’s look at what happens in the middle years in my next blog. My husband and I are going to have lunch now.