Things That They Will Never Tell You About Marriage
Being in a marriage is like getting a new job, getting pregnant or having a baby. Everyone is happy for you and you are, too, because it is a good thing. In the same way, married life comes with a lot of unpleasant things that will make you doubt what you signed up for. To help you prepare for the surprises of married life, here are some of the most unpleasant surprises that marriage has in store for you.
1. Marriage Has no Rules
The most logical way to end a wedding ceremony would be to hand a marriage manual to couples. Of course, numerous books have attempted to come up with what they claim to be best practices for marriages but few people have ever had their marriages saved by or attributed the success of their marriage to reading a book on marriage.
The reason why a marriage manual cannot be made is because individuals are different and so are couples. Two marriages can both be successful and yet their success will be based on very different elements. In the same way, no two bad marriages are similar.
As a result how you make your marriage successful is based on the two of you doing what works best for you based on your unique needs and personalities. Find those characteristics, keep learning about each other and keep accommodating each other based on those unique elements. Make life easy for yourselves by changing what can be changed and adapting to what cannot be changed.
In short, if there were ever to be a marriage manual that could work for all, it would read like this: Figure it out for yourself as you go along. Enjoy your happy days and pick yourself up when you fall. Keep learning. Keep moving.
2. Marriage Is Hard Work with no Vacations
Marriage is very different from what you imagine it to be when you are dating or preparing for the wedding. During this time all you see is love and bliss.
In real life, though, getting married is not different from starting a business or starting work at a new work place. Whether you stay there for a few months, a few years or work till you retire, your work will be defined by the happenings of each and every passing day. These will include those bad days when you nearly resigned, or when your company was nearly shut down after the taxman descended on your premises. Or that happy day when you received an award for being the employee of the year. There will also be plenty of plain, uneventful days too. Together, all these days are what will define your time at your job or your company.
Marriage works in a similar way. There will be bad times when you will need every ounce of your strength just to make it through the day. Things like a sickness or an accident in the family, a divorced sister who needs shelter as she tries to find her feet, your husband being laid off, all these will visit your marriage without any warning. And sometimes, just when you think your problems are behind you, something else will crop up, again. There will be days like those.
And, then, there will be happy days, like when you host a cocktail dinner with your family and friends celebrating your husband’s promotion or record profits for the company you started from your basement. There will be great days of vacationing where everything will go perfectly.
Bad days and good days, you will have both. But, good or bad, each day will have to be worked through, dealt with as it comes. The thing to remember is that there will be continuous, relentless work with no chance for you to take a break. A marriage is a living thing and you cannot switch it off for a moment just so you can take a breather.
3. You Are Marrying His Entire Tribe
Remember that relative of yours who likes to show up on your doorstep just when you are about to slip into your bed and have yourself a quiet Sunday, afternoon? Well, your man has those, too. Actually, he has quite a few. And when you marry him, they all come along. It is a package deal.
By virtue of marrying your man, you will, automatically, inherit a new set of relatives. You will be with them at weddings, at funerals and even during holidays. Somehow, there will always be one whose job will be to rub you the wrong way – that addict sister of his who will be pinching from your purse each time she shows up, uninvited, for Christmas lunch; a mother-in-law who thinks his son deserves better cooking and will use every opportunity to broadcast her position whenever your friends come to visit.
The good news, though, is that happiness is a choice only you can make. You can either choose to fight your husband by trying to push him to forbid his Uncle John from visiting every Sunday afternoon, which will only bring you more grief because it is not going happen. Or you can choose to take it all in your stride by ignoring the crazy in-laws, enjoying, instead, the good things that life brings you each and every day. You may not be able to control your circumstances. But you can choose how you react to what happens to you and around you. It is your call to make.
4. You Do not Know Him that Well
You probably will marry or have married a guy because you think you know him so well. Sorry to break it to you, but that can never be true. There is no one who knows anyone that well.
As you start living together you will discover things about your mate that you did not know. You may have a pretty good idea about how he will react to certain things or fold his underwear but there will always be something new that you will discover about him that will surprise you. And several years down the line, you will still be discovering things about your mate. Some so obvious you will be surprised you missed them all these years.
For example, one man was surprised to discover that, after ten years in marriage, his wife cannot breath while kissing. He had observed that she would break off and look away whenever they were having a long, passionate kiss. All those years he never bothered to ask why until one Sunday afternoon during an intimate time in the kitchen. The moral of the story? You can still be having long, passionate kisses even after ten year of marriage!
On a more serious note, if it is any consolation, you do not know yourself that well, either. Given the right circumstances, you will be surprised at the things you will discover you are capable of doing. Somehow, marriage will provide you with plenty of those situations. That is when you will be surprised to discover how angry you can get at a person, or how far jealous rage can drive you.
5. You Will Fall out of Love
This should have been the first point but it was important to have you read all the others, first. That drug-like effect you feel in your heart called love? It eventually goes away after a few months or so.
That emotional sensation we call love is actually a biological reaction caused by a hormone and as time goes by, it starts wearing off. So eventually you will sober up and start feeling normal again. That is why dating couples are encouraged to date longer or know each other better before getting married. Otherwise deciding to get married within just a short time of courtship is usually a decision that is made under the influence of love hormones.
So what happens, when you fall out of love? Most dating couples break up as soon as they discover that they no longer feel the way you used to feel for each other. In a marriage, however, there is no such joy. You cannot walk away from a marriage just because you no longer feel excited about your partner.
Instead, you start living, you start making use of the things that make you compatible and compliment each other, whatever that may be. For those who have managed to build a strong friendship during their time of hormone-induced excitement, their relationship will thrive. Otherwise, you can start working on building that friendship from scratch for it is what will keep you together.
6. Your Wedding Day Doubts Stay with You
You know the feeling you had on your wedding day as to whether you were doing the right thing or not? Well those questions never completely, go away.
You will be questioning your decision to get married each time he does something you do not like. The truth is that you were going to be feeling the same way and asking the same questions regardless of who you were going to get married to. The reason for that is that men are human, not angels. They make mistakes just like anyone else.
And you are not the only one who will be experiencing such feelings, either. Most people who have stayed in successful marriages have had the same thoughts haunt them each time things seemed to be going the wrong way. But these are all passing moments. Just like all the bad times and the good times of marriage, these feeling come and go. All you have to do is keep walking, stay the course.
These are just some of the issues that you will come across in you marriage that no one else will tell you about. The bottom line is that while these issues have led to divorces in some instances, it is important to note that those who have stayed the course have gone through the same issues and survived. No one ever died because of these issues. You, too, will survive.
(youqueen.com)
