Friday, October 18, 2013

Marriage - my thoughts


Today, I decided to go a different route with my thoughts. A picture was posted on Facebook that got me thinking. It was a picture of an old couple and it read, “A reporter asked the couple, how did you manage to stay together for 65 years? The woman replied ‘We were born in a time when if something was broken we would fix it, not throw it away...’”

I could only think about how right she is. I was not born during that period of time, but I am happily married for almost 27 years, how did WE keep it together all that time? We had our ups and downs like everyone else. We have gone through sickness, loss of jobs, a major car accident, children and so many other things. What keeps us together?

In the beginning stages of marriage, we experience “infatuation.” This is the feeling that your partner can do no wrong. There isn’t anything they can do or say that bothers you. We have all talked to people while they are in this stage, and the sugar that runs from their mouths is just so sickening sweet, you want to vomit. I don’t know why we feel that way, because we have all been THAT person and made our friends want to barf. This is the stage we all wish would stay around forever. We can’t eat, we can’t sleep, we can’t concentrate. Our world revolves around this new person in our lives. Guess what? That stage eventually dies down. Don’t get me wrong, I still have moments when I look at my wife and it rekindles the fires of infatuation and I am riding high and again hope it never ends. But we cannot maintain that state forever, because it’s not real.

The second stage of marriage is when we start to notice that this person we love so much actually has some flaws. It can be just a little thing, but when repeated over and over, begins to grate on our nerves. Perhaps it’s in the way they pronounce a certain word. You know it’s wrong and during the infatuation period, it seemed so cute, but now, it just seems like it needs to be fixed or you’re likely to scream. It’s ok to feel this way. An example in my case is that I never put the toilet seat down. In the beginning that was ok, after all, love conquers all! But after a while, it became an issue. Just a little background, I grew up in a house of all boys. Putting the seat down wasted a lot of people’s time. But NOW, I’m sharing a bathroom with someone I love deeply, and she is asking me to make a change. So do I change the way I’ve done something my whole life, or do I stand and fight for doing things the way I want and make HER change? I can easily argue that she just needs to look before sitting down. (Those who have been married for a while will probably say this is so minor, why use it as an example? I do it just to illustrate a point. ANYTHING can be an issue, big or small. We all have something that gets under our skin and we are going to have to deal with it. Too many people keep their mouths shut on little things and when the big things come along, it only adds to what has not yet been resolved. It has been said that the way you do anything, is the way you will do everything. So if you won’t talk about the little things, you won’t talk about the big things either.) Back to my example… what I decided to do about the toilet seat was make the change in myself. I decided that since it was not a “life or death” situation. I could change because my love for her is greater than my need to do things my way. Again, a very minor situation, but later in life when the big things came along, we handled them the same way.

The third stage of marriage, I have heard called “the stage of misery.” Sounds ever so sexy, doesn’t it? This is the stage when you wonder, why did I ever get married in the first place? I heard about this stage during pre-marital counseling. The counseling was required by the pastor who married us, and it was eye-opening to say the least. I recommend ALL couples go through it and actually pay attention, because what is being taught is real, no matter how much you believe you and your intended spouse think you’re different. But the point of the counseling is to say, this stage will come, and half of all marriages fall apart at this time. After learning about the “misery” stage, we were told, here’s how to shorten this period and survive it. Guess what, we actually listened during the counseling and when this period came in our marriage, we talked about it, wrestled with it, and it passed very quickly. I hate when people say we were “lucky” that our marriage lasted so long. There was no luck involved. It was nothing short of being completely committed to figuring out what to do during the hard times and putting in the work to make it happen. One key to our success is that we took divorce off the table before we got married. So if divorce is not an option, you are forced to find other ways to go at the problems. As long as divorce is an option, you leave the door wide open to the idea of avoiding putting in some hard work. And never forget, marriage is work. It is very rewarding work at that. And yes, it can be very hard at times, but the rewards are great for staying with it.

I don’t remember what the 4th and 5th stages are called, but it is when love actually becomes mature. You made it through the hard times and now it’s a matter of happily living out the rest of your days with the one you love. Nothing is going to tear you apart short of death.

I can hear the critics already saying, but what if the person I married changed after we got married? Or what if he beats his wife? Or my spouse is so selfish and won’t work on our marriage? Or my spouse had an affair? Ok, first of all, I don’t believe EVERY divorce is wrong. Some marriages SHOULD end. I would never advocate a woman staying in an abusive marriage. Or if one partner refuses to work at the marriage that it’s all on the other. We all know couples that have been together 50 years and were never happy. They are proud to have “stuck it out”, but I believe marriage should be joyful, not miserable. So what I AM saying, is that 50% of all marriages ending in divorce is simply not acceptable. Divorce should be rare, not an everyday occurrence. I am not a marriage counselor. I do not claim to have all the answers. I can only speak from my own experience. Earlier I gave the example of the toilet seat. Most people reading this probably thought it was so insignificant that they ignored it. Well, I think it is more significant than it appears. I think my wife and I got through the really tough times because we talked about the little things first. Those little things that may have bothered you but seemed too petty to bring up, actually gave us practice on how we would eventually handle the big things. When a little thing bothered one of us, we talked about it. If it was bigger, we talked about it. If it was huge, we talked about it. Holding it in, only allows it to fester and grow. If you couldn’t talk about it while it was small, how will you talk about it when it’s big and ugly?

Now that I’ve said my piece, I want to finish by saying that I am an advocate of teaching young people how to live for others and stop focusing on themselves. The first step to a successful marriage is to focus on making your spouse happy. If I focus on my wife’s happiness, and she focuses on mine, we will both be happy. Not just happy, but happy beyond what we could possibly imagine. I don’t mean thinking, “If I do this nice thing for her, I get in return…” I mean, “I am going to do this nice thing for no reason other than I love her.” What ends up coming back is far greater than what you could have planned for. So if you teach your children nothing else, teach them to live for other people and not just for themselves.

3 comments:

  1. I love this post. I can't really comment on my experience since I haven't been married very long, but little things DEFINITELY get on my nerves.

    I'd like to know more about this "misery stage". I didn't go through pre-marital counseling (as you know), so I know nothing about the stages of marriage.

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    1. I'm not going to write a complete comment about the stage of misery here, but the key is ALWAYS communication. If little things are bothering you, you have to talk it out with your husband. Let him know that there are things bothering you. Tell him that when he does this or that, how it makes you feel. He is never going to even consider changing something if he doesn't know it's a problem. Also, give him permission to tell you what bothers him. If you begin by fixing the little things now, when the big things come down the road, you will know how to fix those too. But I can never say this enough times, you have to communicate at all times, on all things. When you argue, don't make it a point to win the argument. Make it a point to resolve the issue to the most advantage for both of you. If congress would stop trying to win their arguments and start trying to do what's best for everyone, we wouldn't have so many problems. They don't care who loses as long as they get their way. That can't be the way you run your marriage. Whatever is best for your marriage, is the correct resolution.

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  2. Wise words...mebbe you ought to practice marriage counselling on the side!!Heheh! Divorces can be very expensive and debilitating with lasting psychological scars.

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