Married for long and tired of it?

I have penned down this topic this morning and was working on other things when hours later the case of a man who is about to work out on his 31 year old relationship came on air on the online radio playing on my laptop.

Why would a man want to quit a relationship that has produced a 24 year old son? You can blame all the demons in the world, but is there no cause?

Marriage is designed to be a long distance race; it’s definitely not a 100 meters dash. And you see, lots of things happen in marathons, that is why marathon is called the king of all races. The conditions that make the 100m race exciting do not apply in long distance races.

All over the world, cases of divorces among people who have been married for more than 20 years is on the increase. This is not only affecting family life as the children get caught in the middle, it is also a negative advertisement for marriage. If our fathers and mothers cannot hold it together anymore, with all the wisdom of days, what is the way forward?

I don’t have answers to this problem, but I feel whatever is a problem in marriages generally, may not be different for old couples. But one would have expected that couples mature and grow into each other with time, but this does not always happen.

Some major causes of this trend of late separations are listed below;

1.       Bottled up pre-marital errors not addressed – people who feel they made a mistake in marrying their mates may just hang around until the kids are grown and then part ways to find their cinderalla or prince charming;

2.       Unresolved personal differences – Couples usually get lost in the routine of raising kids and keeping a home. They typically endure so much for the sake of the kids and societal expectations. With time, the cracks will open up;

3.       Growing apart – As the years pass by, couples who do not deliberately tend their love gardens automatically begin to drift apart. This is when Papa Emeka and Iya Femi becomes the order of the day. Women typically lose interest in romance with time, they retire romantically and begin to feel those things are for the un-married, sometimes they don’t even notice when the spouses have become emotional strangers;

4.       Adultery/Mid life crisis – Following from the above, one or both partners may find expressions for their sexualities outside the marriage. The easiest culprit for this is mid life crisis. Men in their middle ages suddenly begin to pursue youthful feelings and looking for younger mates to validate their assumed youthfulness.  This why the Sugar Daddy/Aristo industry is waxing stronger by the day. Women too sometimes wake-up from years of neglecting romance to find that life can be good again. Women typically begin to give in to advances from  close acquaintances, bosses, co-workers, personal staffs like drivers and so on.  For women, this mid life crisis may or may not be caused by the husband’s philandering ways;

5.       Well kept secrets – Some people can actually keep secrets. After 20 years of marriage, a man or woman can realize the spouse has been hiding some terrible stuff. Many married couples are yet to declare their love child. This leads to explosion in the relationship when discovered.

Whatever it is, I believe that if you have put up with it for 30 years, haba, what more? We know that the grass is always greener on the other side, but don’t you think someone has to be watering the garden?  Is it possible to be tired of working on a marriage relationship, I am sorry, wherever you head to in relationship, there is work to be done, Trust me.

Marriage is a long distance race; I guess the most successful and lasting marriages survives through all the turmoil and stress of life. Is it possible commitment to instant happiness and constant euphoria can mar what seems to be a potentially lasting union?