No Good Marriage for Lazy Man/Woman

 

Social media has now provided an anonymous platform for people to table their life matters for discussions. The quality of responses submitted by these very faceless advisers is a story for another day. It is very common now to find questions on various blogs on what to do to revive marriages – wait for it, most of them not more than 1 year after the wedding.

Question is, what is it that is so terribly wrong in a relationship that within one year, the individuals involved are now total strangers and feeling so frustrated?

I may not have all the answers, but I think this generation has got lots of work to do to make marriages work. This is a generation that knows so much about how sweet marriage should be but do nothing to prepare for it. This generation spends so much time looking for the ideal guy or girl with emphasis on materialism and unsustainable fantasies, forgetting that marriage is a world of reality. This is a generation that starts giving and receiving love so early to the wrong people and by the time, marriage comes along, either there is nothing left to give, or mental blocks and stereotypes have built up walls that the partner cannot penetrate.  We get married thinking we have it all sorted out and Miss or Mr Right well secured, only to wake up to find out that he or she is as human as any other person you probably dumped. We get married either thinking all the good things we see will remain permanent and the bad ones will go away, but what happens if change happens, what will you do if he or she will just not meet your expectation to adopt certain changes you had envisaged?

For real, hopes dashed can crush the heart and send couples in different directions. However, it boils down to your understanding of love which you professed before taking the marriage vows.  If it was really love, it should be strong enough look at your disappointments with the eye of unconditional love. Chances are that if you sacrificially invest love and mercy on your imperfect spouse, you will likely receive same in a rich measure.

Wedding is an event, and can be compared to the day you work into an auto dealer’s yard to pick the latest model of your favourite car. Guess what, as you are celebrating your acquisition, you will most likely get a call from the Service Rep whose job is to tell you about the maintenance plan – You need to visit for servicing after just 30 days and periodically thereafter in a very deliberate and systematic way. Ladies and Gentlemen, I know you thought you married the best guy or babe in town, do you have a work/maintenance plan to keep the marriage running smoothly without any of you drifting apart?  How do you sift your emotional connection time from the myriads of family challenges that will come up for discussions every day? How do you disagree respectfully over various tricky issues that you never knew you had varying opinion?  How do you plan to stay loving, lovely and committed emotionally irrespective of any challenge that will come?

When married people get into affairs, they resume the good things they have stopped doing for their spouses, affairs are sweet because people work hard to meet their sin partners’ needs, and I must say that, the other man or woman in an affair is usually as imperfect as anyone else - why not work on making your marriage great today?