Why We Never Get This Marriage Thing Right
“Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?” ― Esther Perel
Oh marriage. Our favorite institution to venture into blindly. Still to this day, I have yet to wrap my head around the fact that people give more thought to their “save the date” invitations than to the contract that they are about to sign that will change their life forever. Marriage isn’t the end of the road my friend, it’s just the beginning of a wild and bumpy ride. And if you don’t wear your helmet and your security belt, you are heading head first toward disaster.
Nietzsche said it, and I could not agree more with his words:If married people didn’t live together, there’d be way less divorces down the road Now before you get at me and bite my hand, here’s what I have to say about this. I get that when you decide to create a family, it’s kinda not super feasible to not live with your spouse and kidoos all in one house. I get it. But for all the other couples out there who are childless, I still can’t figure out why they choose to live together (if we take out of the equation the financial perspective.)
Why invite boredom, lack of novelty, familiarity, only to name a few - into your home when you can avoid it? We can’t complain that the desire isn’t like it once used to be or that dry spells become the norm. We set ourselves up for all this fuckery by not choosing to delay hedonic adaptation. At the end of the day, there’s no one to blame but our biased silly selves always thinking that we, somehow, will make it right.
We ought to embrace that there’s no such thing as an exception to the rule. It does not matter that you marry the hottest person on earth. The thrill of the new will always wear off no matter who you mate with. Maybe by understand better human nature and coming to terms with it, we could perhaps find ways to counter the downsides of our inherent fuckedupness.
Maybe instead of spending 87 hours picking our venue we ought to put this time making sure that we enter marriage with realistic expectations that match the ones of our partner. This isn’t fiction babe. This is reality - and one to take seriously as the stakes are high. Thinking that “love will triumph it all” or that “love will be enough” are bullshit myths that need to be shattered completely.
Love doesn’t sustain itself on its own. Bounds don’t get solidified just because you are wife and husband on a formal piece of paper. Leave your plants without water for months, and you’ll see them slowly dying. Leave your marriage unattended for months, and the connection between your spouse and yourself will slowly start to crumble.
Some people get it right.
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I know!
You are the rare exception to the rule 😘💜😏 I read a post of yours not too long ago and you wrote how you missed your wife while you were gone for a day shooting or something and my heart melted to butter.
How do you keep it going with such fondness after 30+ years? You truly set an example for us all 💗🙏🏻
I'm not sure how we make it work, but we do. Maybe not allowing outside influences to skew the way our relationship comes into it..We don't like so I'll media, other people's diatribe and don't confirm to so I'll convention. We just do our own thing, what we want to do. Most people are ways looking over the horizon at what they may never attain when all they need is right there next to them.
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What a write up post
I recently attended a wedding and I’m surprised I made it to the reception, I Just couldn’t anymore and Uber’d Hôme! Lol it was just too much for me, the psychosis of it all!
Unfortunately, I’m part of another one later this year, no way I’m getting out of it! At least I don’t have to live with the decisions!
Oh well to each their own I say! If you can make it work more power to you!
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Omg I can’t!😂🙏🏻 “It was too much for me. The psychosis of it all.” Fuck do I feel ya! People marry a fantasy. And sadly our delusional selves get burnt too many times
Good luck. Have you got a dress picked out?
HAHAHAHAHHAHA:P
Haven’t even picked up my spouse yet;)
You??
I don't wear dresses. ;) lol I would probably just wear some black suit.
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.
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