Hope Springs, A Movie About Real, Adult Relationships – This afternoon to celebrate her birthday, I took my wife Laura to see the movie Hope Springs which stars Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carrell. 

In this movie Streep and Jones play a couple who have been married for 31 years and have serious intimacy and communications issues. Streep’s character desperately wants to make the marriage better so she buys a book written by a relationship expert played by Carrell’s character After reading the book and much research she decides to book a intensive marital counseling session for them. Jones character was not happy but decides to go with her. Well after several sessions they realize there was more problems than they realized and were given exercises to reconnect their relationship. Eventually through some painful trials and error they got back together. 

The movie helped me realize how complacent we can get with spouses and even other relationships we have. As time goes we take things for granted with people in our lives. Time in a marriage or relationship does not make it solid. Our reasons for doing things become habit and after awhile we forget why we did them in the first place. Its great that Hollywood made a movie where mature people have complex problems that are real problems with their marriages and they are taking it seriously instead of just splitting up. Everyone can gain some wisdom from this movie in how to deal with their relationship issues. This is a movie with mature subject matter but its issues that we all will face at some times in our lives. 

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