There are misconceptions we all travel through life under, one of them being our concept about partnership and marriage.
Without going into the details of all those beliefs and fantasies – ideals we’ve been fed through Ken and Barbie, TV, and generations of observing some marriages work, but many don’t – I want to talk about a phenomena I’ve noticed. There is something that occurs when we go from dating to partnership, from being unmarried and courting to married.
People talk about “the honeymoon period” that happens when we first get together with a partner, and a brief period of time right after being married, where things seem to go very well between the couple – and then the relationship enters a downward slide that over the years never seems to recover as pressures such as children, work, finances, division of tasks, challenges to values, influences from extended family and friends, and societal trends bombard our senses.
Critics who stay single and “available” judge, laugh, and put pressure on struggling couples, encouraging their friends-in-distress to return to “playing the field,” maybe have an affair (a very few mention counseling) – and there’s always the option of divorce, which is now the most popular rip-off-the-scab-and-apply-bandaid, “rinse-and-repeat” approach to dreams of a life fulfilled gone awry.
But, let’s back it up here a minute: let’s go all the way back to the beginning, before everything became a mess and entangled.
I’d like to talk about a phenomenon I’ve noticed: one so subtly stealthy that we all fall into its trap without knowing it. There is a kind of psychological shift that happens when we go from being single to partnered – but especially from unmarried to married.
How do I explain this? Let’s see…it’s like leaving a phase from where we are blissfully unaware and in denial to suddenly entering a preset construct: a forum, like in virtual reality, where pressures we’ve held in check our entire lives suddenly release and must be accounted for. Only this isn’t VR – this is real life – and “Hell” must be addressed and paid if we wish to get to Heaven.
Think about about all of the messaging you’ve heard about marriage, what it means and “should and shouldn’t do’s” you’ve ingested. Think about what you’ve been taught marriage means “In the Eyes of God;” think about what the priests of the church expect from you. Think about all of the arguments your parents had with each other, where they were able to function together – and where they couldn’t.
Think about relationships you saw all around you, what you fantasized about, the ideals you held – and if you saw any examples of these actually functioning and flourishing in your reality. Remember if you ever experienced bullying or abuse, unfairness, criticism, injustice – remember how small you felt then. Think about how you wished you could get even, or were or were not protected. Think about times you felt safe – and when you wanted to run away.
How did you address or cope with any of these experiences and messaging while you grew up? My guess is that you “did the best you could under the circumstances” while being a child and developing adult, most likely without proper support and direction. So here you are now, partially finished and cobbled together at best, locked and loaded with tension waiting to explode, needing to deal with all of these issues as you enter and gain new maturity.
Now that you’ve found someone you would like to partner with and are committed to walking through the door into matrimony, as you open that door, all that past life experience saunters right into the relationship with you. It’s like an ignored child that needs attention and is starving because it hasn’t been fed any food. It’s like a roommate you did not invite – in fact, one ready and willing to trash your home or apartment just because he/she’s an adult now and “has the right to.”
But do you know why all this past internally-suppressed behavior suddenly comes forward? It’s because you now have another person there, every day, to reflect upon and interact with – who by default of close proximity and our need for connection and bonding with another person becomes your mirror. And hey, they promised to “love and cherish you, forever,” right? So they’ve got buy-in. They’re supposed to “be here for you, no matter what.” Now, “the real fun begins.”
The way we look at marriage is terribly skewed. We come into it with all of these external and internally superimposed expectations that marriage will fix everything that’s been wrong in our lives and elevate us to a higher status and better quality of living.
We don’t enter into marriage looking for a partner willing to collaborate with us to overcome our deepest fears, to help create trust where little exists, to consciously bear witness to our internal demons and help support us as we do the work needed to overcome them. We don’t go into marriage for the real opportunity that marriage represents: healing and deep bonding. Yet, we get slammed by the force of all these past issues emerging into the relationship, once we’ve found someone we want to commit to.
We can run from these truths, but we cannot hide: they will creep through the seams into our daily lives, no matter how many layers of sugar coating we try to cover them with.
That past unease, unrest, and dissatisfaction will – eventually – permeate everything we want to protect from it simply because it is there as a continuously held negative charge and puts pressure on us subconsciously while we deal with accumulating daily challenges, consciously. To prevent damaging our partnership, we must address these preexisting issues from the very beginning as a part of the blueprint-to-success for our marriages.
This brings to mind how flawed our partner-seeking qualifications are. We are taught to go for attraction, money, and external opportunities. While these are important, they can each be achieved over time to some degree – even if they are not initially present. The key ingredient we are never taught to look for – but that is the crux upon which many successful marriages depend – is compatibility in communication, and whether or not our partner truly likes us, has a compatible belief system to ours, and wants bonding connection with us. This is where we find the real “buy-in.”
If we have these core ingredients of communication and regard’s affection, then the matrix of our marital relationship becomes ours to design to our mutual, collaborative satisfaction.
Most everyone has something attractive about their body and personality: these aspects can be focused upon and enhanced by paying attention to them and building upon them. If we invest in education, strategy, and responding to good timing, we can gain financial success. As we focus on making real progress by putting in real work and applying conscious awareness, we place ourselves in better circumstances. Over time, our productive efforts yield results we learn from, improve upon, and that bring us more opportunities.
So again, let’s take it back to the basics.
Know that marriage is not what we’ve come to believe it to be, but that many of the things we’ve heard it ought to be can be prospectively achieved if we recognize its true opportunity: it is the chance to enter into a forum with an equally invested partner and do “the dirty work” it takes for us to become better humans.
Candid Corvid Productions 