It is incredibly important, and critical to any thriving marriage, that spouses see each other as separate persons with unique goals and desires. This is not easy to do. In the first thrall of love, people tend to look for and find their similarities with each other and to ignore obvious differences. It’s normal to see the ways a new partner thinks like us and to focus on the things that bind us together….
After a while a new couple realizes that for all their similarities they are still different in significant ways. For many couples, this is a problematic stage, and it requires a good deal of forgiveness.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 151-152