Dating to Marriage-Why Marriages don't Work

I mentioned I am getting married and my friends burst out into a horrific laughter. Somehow they assumed that I was joking, I mean, let’s face it-I had condemned each and every one of them before they said I do at the altar. For someone who is highly opinionated on how a marriage should be, that didn’t come much as a surprise.

I had this whole idea that marriage is a sacred institution where the two parties in it are responsible for the success of a greater thing. Their union should be a reflection of the two individual souls merged together to bring out one being of great significance to society. Their actions should be the kind of killing two birds with one stone, where the success of one is reflected in the other. Team work is the whole ideology of this institution. However, my friends have been through a series of divorces, separations, restraining orders and a whole bunch of relationship drama that even I can’t handle.

I expected my friends to be all over the place full of joy because I was getting married, instead I was slapped on the face with endless throwbacks of what a disaster marriage could be, based on their experiences of course. That got me thinking, why are they so sure that my relationship and marriage is bound to fail just like theirs did?

Relationships fail because both parties always want to believe they are right. Rarely do they iron outtheir issues but instead lock it in assuming that the other party will figure it out, in real sense that never happens. It’s not like couples are born with telepathy abilities to read each other’s minds?

The whole concept of dating is to test the waters, try out different fish in the enormous ocean until you land on the right one. This is where people go in half-heartedly, because they are unsure of the outcome.

However, once you land on your Cinderella/ Prince charming, you have no reason to be unsure. The moment you second guess yourself and still progress with the relationship, then it’s undoubted that it will fail.

The fact that you also go in to a new relationship with old scars from previous disastrous relationships, doesn’t make things any different in the new relationship. These scars will hold you back and prevent you from enjoying your new found love.

Most people go into a relationship for adventure; to see where it leads. This is being dishonest with oneself. To be in a relationship in the first place, you need to understand and know why you are in it, know all your reasons by heart, lest you get disappointed.

My friends didn’t listen to me most of the time when I told them it’s too soon to get married. To prevent failure, they probably should have taken their sweet time to know their partners in and out, with their pros and cons. That would have enabled them to be certain of who they are marrying. That was also a determining factor to know if their personalities are compatible with each other, hence they’d know if that would be a happily ever after relationship.

Knowing your partner to the core clears all doubts that you’ve ever had about your partner. Many people hide their real self and regret it later on when they realize that the person they married isn’t the same one they dated. The past should remain as history. When you embark on a new relationship, don’t dwell on your previous mistakes but forgive yourself and give yourself a chance to love on a clean slit.

Those however are some of the challenges we face before we declare our vows in front of our friends and family. We get married and assume that life will be as it was before. This ignorance kills many marriages. Rarely do people think about the life after marriage. Yes, you lived together for a couple of years, shared each other’s space, and enjoyed each other’s company.

But did you consider that the space then was smaller, there was no family involved and professional careers hadn’t taken a toll in your lives. As soon as you move to a bigger house, you advance in your career, kids come along, life happens to fast and it becomes overwhelming. There are always a lot of responsibilities to handle and failure from one partner to meet all these responsibilities becomes a backbone to a failed marriage.

Petty things such as bills, family finances become a subject of argument. Sooner than you know it, trust and faith in each other is lost. You can’t trust your partner to accomplish a certain task or with information about what’s going on in your life. As time goes by, you stop appreciating each other for who they are and the little or massive things you do for each other. You get indulged in your work schedules and before you know it, you only see your families either late in the night or only on weekends. These are grounds for divorce or cheating because your partners are left lonely.

Sadly my friends knew that these things happen in their lives, but like many others out there, they chose to ignore all in the name of things will get better. But do they really?

Not all relationships suffer the same fate as long as you know what you want and so does your partner. Communication is the principle of a relationship, being in it together such that your lives are an open book to each other, no secrets, no lies, just truth. Appreciate your partner for who he is and what he does and the feeling should be reciprocated. Despite your busy schedules, always compromise and make time for each other.

What builds a relationship is the love between two parties. This and tiny things like trust and communication should be the foundation of the sacred institution I’ve always thought marriage to be.