RE: Why We Never Get This Marriage Thing Right
You bring up a lot of great points. Tying together a couple of your previous works, we fall victim to that puppy love feeling in the beginning. We think that sex is the litmus test of our relationships and salves any problem. But as you said in the last paragraph, if we don’t take care of those relationships, if we don’t work on them, not just applying those quick fixes to them but taking the time to learn and understand what that other person want and needs from that relationship.
What sucks, is that the little bit of work we avoided with the quick fixes in then beginning, has and can turned into a massive dumpster fire filled with passive aggressive comments and unspoken feelings.
Like you said, if people put even a fraction of the time and effort that they put into the invitations into the contract or he’ll the relationship they embarking on, their happiness in that said relationship might be greater.
You said it all!
Love the allusion you make to the dumpster fire. All the little things remaining unaddressed and swept under the rug app up, and it’s only a matter of when the bomb is going to tick ;)
We ignore those things as well because we are told from a very early age that troubles should not exist so early in a relationship. The "honeymoon" should sustain our collective souls for many years before we should ever have issues to work on and by then, kids should be in the works, so we should just keep shoveling that away.
I was having the discussion with a coworker today. He is going through a divorce and we were talking about the children. He was concerned about them and how this was going to impact them. Well, I assured him that they would survive it, they might not be happy about it, but they would survive. I then spoke to him about the lesson that they will hopefully learn. Not that marriage is disposable, but that misery is not a permanent state of existence. We can rescue ourselves from it. It doesn't not weaken us, it makes us stronger if we allow ourselves to leave misery behind.
Wow! So touching and true what you wrote here ❤️ “Misery is not a permanent state of existence.”
While divorce inevitably will hurt the children- I stand firm with the belief that staying in an unhappy marriage “for the sake of the children” will cause far more damage to them in the long haul.
You are right, it will cause more damage. Just for the sake that they will more likely stay in unhealthy relationships because they are mirroring what they were taught as children.