Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. - George Bernard Shaw
When Ruth Stafford Peale wrote – The Adventures of Being a Wife – many years ago, she was inundated with letters and telephone calls from many people considerably less enchanted with matrimony. A young wife who had tied the nuptial knot only three years ago wanted to know what was wrong with her marriage. She complained that her marriage was frayed and moth-eaten. Although she had tried to save her marriage from going on the rocks, she failed to do so.
A local marriage counsellor confided in me that most of the complaints came from young husbands and wives. They were convinced that they were putting more into marriage than they were getting out of it. It seems that there is a kind of imbalance and frustration which lead to all kinds of trouble. He was of opinion that in marriage or in any other relationship, the way people feel about other people depends on the way those other people make them feel.
When you get married each partner has to make an honest effort to love, to be faithful and to look after each other in times of adversity. On the other hand, marriage is also a legal contract in which each party expects to have certain needs fulfilled. It is obvious that the husband has to bear the burden of finding food, clothing and other amenities for his wife. In addition, husbands and wives have emotional hungers that need to be satisfied.
Basic yearnings
There is nothing mysterious about basic yearnings in marriage. If a husband is lucky enough to find a partner who is not a nagging wife, there is nothing to worry about other matters. However, you cannot expect all wives to have the same temperament. When psychic vacuums are not filled, you have to be on the lookout for troubles. They are the starting points of disappointments, disenchantments, and increasing friction. If you are selfish enough to think that your happiness and welfare come first, you are making a serious mistake.
The cornerstone for a successful marriage is having complete priority in your partner’s affection. You naturally feel it when the other person starts sending clear, frequent, and unambiguous signals. What are these signals? Each partner in a marriage will have to develop their own signals. There are many marriage counselling books that recommend leaving a love note under the pillow, paying a compliment in public, or a casual caress. They work well if you do them genuinely. However, outward expressions of love will not save a marriage in the long run. Modern psychologists say that you have to dramatise them. Sometimes you may not get enough signals from your partner. It may be that you are not sending enough signals yourself.
We are living in a world where everybody needs somebody else’s strength. This is because life is full of awkward burdens that nobody can carry them all alone. Wives often complain that they need more help from their husbands to bring up children, attend to household matters and solve financial problems. In short, they need some help in everything imaginable. How many husbands are willing to solve their problems? They are few and far between.
Legal obligation
Husbands and wives have failed to realise that when they help each other they are also helping themselves. Apart from a legal obligation, helping your partner is a matter of self-interest. When you take some of the pressure off your partner, you can run your own life smoothly. As someone has said, marriage is a two-wheeled cart. If one of the wheels is not working properly, the whole cart would collapse.
If you are married to an author, you will soon find that your husband is an utterly impractical man. He will have enough creative ideas to write novels and short stories. When he is writing something he can be somewhat temperamental at times. In such a situation his wife has a major role to play. She can handle family finances and shield him from distractions. When Charles Dickens fell in love with a young actress and married her, she failed to realise that he was a great novelist. Dickens divorced his wife who had borne him ten children. So Dickens and his second wife belonged to two generations. As a result, his second marriage failed.
I knew of a husband who was a hot-tempered and headstrong man. One day he returned home in a rage and wrote out his letter of resignation. His charming wife did not ask him not to resign from his job. Instead she undertook to post his letter of resignation on her way to office. After two days, she asked him whether he still wanted to resign from his job. “No. My heavens! Did you post that letter?”
“Here’s your letter. I didn’t post it,” she said. He grabbed it and tore it into pieces and told her, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Be indispensable
Although most of are not philosophers or psychologists, we want to know the reason for our existence. The answer lies in feeling indispensable to someone else. For a loving husband, his wife is indispensable. Similarly, for a wife, her husband is someone who cannot be replaced. The sense of being needed is missing in some marriages. If you think you can live without your partner, your marriage will not last long.
There are many ways to make yourself indispensable in marriage. If a husband or wife is loyal and caring, they become indispensable to each other. As some people erroneously believe, marriage is not a difficult and demanding challenge. However, some of us make it a complicated relationship. Marriage is a relationship in which human beings try to find release and fulfillment. They do not ask for anything else.
In the typical fairy tale, a dashing young man and a beautiful young woman marry, have children and live happily ever after. However, that scenario has changed in the 21st century. Today people get married but the probability of divorce is very high particularly for young couples. In many parts of the world, marriages end in divorce. The thread that winds through most marriages is one of dominance and submission. While the roles may shift regularly, the thread is nevertheless present.
Blissful marriage
Anybody can enjoy a blissful marriage only if they manage to get out of their erroneous zones. People free from erroneous zones are different from run-of-the-mill individuals. They possess distinct qualities, none of which is racial, socio-economic, or sexual. There is a different quality about them, but the difference is not discernible. Such people do what they enjoy and waste no time in complaining against shortages or wishing things were otherwise.
However, they are enthusiastic about life. They like travelling, movies, books, musical concerts, animals, trees, waterfalls and whatnot. In short, they like everything natural and positive in life.
It is the negative people who mess up their marriages and look for greener pastures. They are never satisfied with what they possess. You should never get married to such a person however much they look attractive.