Every weekend and some weekdays people celebrate marriages. Every day, marriages are collapsing around us. As more people are rushing in, more people are rushing out. Marriage is going extinct, so some say and one wonders, is it the dead or dread of marriage that brings about the disintegration of the institution of marriage?
Marriage is instituted for a happily-ever-after, that is the concept, that is what every couple has in mind as they take the vows. However, the dreamy eye brides soon discover that the bed of roses they envisioned has thorns in it and the prickle soon shocks them to wakefulness. What they see and the experience becomes different from their expectation and perception. All because people go into marriage with the wrong impression.
Some people enter the “marriageship”, for unhealthy reasons. This is where the problem lies because before they finish saying I do, the marriage is already heading toward an iceberg that will shatter and sink it. It’s just a matter of time.
Before you propose or say yes, first ask yourself some relevant questions like:
Am I ready for marriage?
Is he/she who I want to spend the rest of my life with?
What are my beliefs about love?
Not many people marry for happily-ever-after or marry for true love. Marriage is meant to be a lifelong partnership.
There are those who enjoy their partners- and by extension their marriage and those who endure their partners and by extension their marriage,
Whether you enjoy or endure your partner depends on the foundation on which your marriage was planted. As the saying goes. “What you sow is what you will reap.”
Did you accept the marriage proposal for the right reason or for the wrong reason?
Accepting a proposal for the wrong reasons included:
Pressure from friends and family.
Don’t ever be with someone because you’re pressured to accept the person. The only reason you should ever consider marrying the person is simply that you love being with the person.
Often friends and family pressure you to get married because you have reached the age of getting married. Everyone is on your neck, to please them and ease the pressure you succumb to it and marry the first person that comes your way or the one recommended for you.
To live happily-ever-after, marry because you have found the right person to settle down with. Someone you feel you can share your life and personal space with.
Single and desperate.
Because you’re single and feel the time is no longer on your side, and you see yourself as a soon-to-be expired commodity, you settle for the first person that comes along. All you want is to be married, to who is of no great consequence to you.
But the consequences of your hasty action will come eventually and make you regret the marriage. In the end, you feel your partner is not good enough, which leads to resentment and insecurity.
As the saying goes, marry in haste and regret at leisure.
Marrying for image or family name.
The marriage will look good on paper, will bring business dividends, will unite the family, and the roll call of the attendees is the cream of the society. It’s everything considered good, but not because the two people involved actually love and admire each other.
Remember, it’s all in the photo, pictures that will become memorabilia, guests that will go home to their lives.
You end up with the butt of a family scheme as a partner. This isn’t a script for a happily-ever-after but a one-way ticket to a toxic relationship in marriage. You will wake up every day to ask yourself how you ended up in such a marriage.
Being naïve and hopelessly in love.
A marriage based on love, at first sight, has a greater risk of ending in disappointment than a marriage built on mutual respect and understanding.
Some believe that once you’re in love it solves everything. That’s not true at all.
Being in love is a process that takes time and patience to build sensual and emotional connections. Most people never reach this deep connection in love. They get addicted to the ups and downs of romantic love, where feelings rule their life. And when the feelings run out, so do they.
Feelings end on your wedding day, the morning after, you will understand the difference between a wedding and a marriage because you’re about to get into the nitty-gritty of what marriage is all about.
And those who get into it for the feelings alone get disappointed. The feelings generally last for a few years at most, and then you’re down from the dizzying high of romantic love.
Once you’re married, and with time, romance goes out of love, you’re left with a human being with faults and imperfections whom you have to genuinely love and respect to enjoy living with. Otherwise, things are going to get rough.
Someone to complete you.
Some people get into marriage as a way to compensate for something lacking in their life. Some feel without marriage they’re incomplete. You marry and expect the person to fulfil your expectation of love and happiness. Love and happiness come from you; nobody gives you that.
Invariably, you will love your partner only as long as they help you feel better about yourself. You will give to them only as long as they give you what you want. You will make them happy only as long as they make you feel happy. This is a recipe for a bad marriage and a breeding ground for domestic abuse.
Do you want a vibrant, healthy, and happy marriage?
A healthy and happy marriage requires two healthy and happy individuals. The keyword here is “individuals.” That means two people with their own identities, their own interests and perspectives, and things they do by themselves, and on their own time and mutually acceptable to them.
“Happily Ever After” is not a piece of cake, all icing and sweetness. No! It’s work and a walk in endurance, patience, compromise, and intentionality. You have to constantly remind yourself every day you wake up to love your partner – the good, the bad and the ugly part of them. And then, to love your life, for both go together. Remaining steadfast in your marriage is an intentional decision you make every day.
Some days, you feel like the world is at your feet. And some days it’s a struggle to keep to that vow, on such bad days, remind yourself why you love your spouse and why you’re in the marriage.
A love that’s alive and healthy is constantly evolving. It expands and contracts mellows and deepen. Just as life never remains static, so is your love for each other. It’s not going to remain the way it used to be in the beginning.
The key to happiness in marriage is when you marry a partner whose values align with yours, whom you respect, love and accept, and vice versa. Another is sustaining a genuine connection by working through the everyday struggles and challenges to make your marriage work.
Everything that makes a marriage “work” not just on the surface but a real deep connection between partners requires a genuine, deep and mutual affection for each other. Without that mutual affection, everything will be a walk in endurance.
Another writer puts it that, “relationships exist as waves–people need to learn how to ride them.”
According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf them.”
There are constant waves of emotion going on in a marriage. Some waves last for hours or days, and some last for months or even years. Understand that the key to successfully surfing these waves lies the foundation of a healthy marriage.
The only thing constant in life is change. People lose jobs, lose family members to death, couples relocate, switch careers, some make money, and some lose money. All these have both emotional and physical effects on people and how they handle them affects the dynamism of their marriage and their relationship with their spouses.
You can work and walk through any issue in your marriage, be it emotionally, physically, financially, or spiritually, as long as there is understanding and healthy communication between you and your partner. You can surf the waves together and come out stronger.
Marriages are imperfect relationships, sometimes messy and complicated. Simple because they are made up of imperfect, messy, and complicated humans. People want different things at different times in different ways, at times in ways you can’t even comprehend. Always remember you’re sharing a life with someone else, so you need to plan on how to accommodate each other’s needs and wants.
When you have a finger on the pulse of each other’s needs, you will probably grow together in the marriage rather than grow apart.
