Secrets
of a Happy Marriage
By Laura Young
My husband and I have a perfect
marriage.
There. I said it.
Now some of you may be inclined to
roll your eyes or gag. Some of you may think I'm exaggerating, lying
or suffering from some delusion. Some of you may feel like I'm
bragging or insensitively flaunting my happiness in total disregard
of all of those folks who don't have a partner or unconditional love
in their lives.
In the past, I would have succumbed
to the pressure, and believe me, it IS pressure, to keep my big
mouth shut when I would hear folks talk about marriage, or the
opposite sex. Regardless of whether I was sitting in the therapist
chair talking to clients, on the phone coaching someone or sitting
across from a friend at lunch, whenever the topic of marriage came
up it I'd hear the litany, "We fight like everyone else."
"It's never perfect." and the half-statements delivered
with an eye roll and knowing glance, "You know...men...",
"You know...women..."
Let's face it. No marriage is
perfect!
When I was younger, if I voiced my
objection to these sweeping statements, "Well, actually we
don't fight." "My husband isn't like that at all." I
would be met with, "How long have you been married?"
"Five years." Then the smirk, "Oh, you're still
babies...just you wait." Or if they would concede that we did
have a good marriage it was always disregarded with comments like,
"Well, you're LUCKY." And, many times I would be told
outright, "I don't want to hear about your happy marriage. I'm
married to a jerk."
So, you hear this enough and you
learn to keep your trap shut.
Then, in a group last year, in the
midst of a huge discussion about the perils and pitfalls of marriage
one of the group members said,
"I think good marriages are an
urban myth."
I just couldn't let that go.
The FACT is, 13 years in, our
marriage is getting better every year. It isn't blind luck and it
certainly wasn't beginner's luck, this being a second marriage for
both of us. It breaks my heart to see so many bad marriages out
there. It really does. A true marriage is an amazing and beautiful
bond. (I do include same sex relationships here, despite my earlier
reference to the "opposite sex".) Because we have so very
few models of healthy marriages out there, I'd like to share what I
have come to appreciate and understand about what makes a marriage
work in the hope that some nugget will help you establish, create or
strengthen your own bond.
1. 'Til death do us part. WOW. Do
people even promise that anymore? You can't promise this AND get a
pre-nup. I'm sorry if I'm offending everyone out there, but I think
entering into a marriage with an exit clause is destructive and
dangerous. Nothing you could say will change my mind on this so hang
on to those e-mails. The reality is TRUST is critical in a marriage.
You can't trust someone AND ask for a dissolution agreement 'just in
case'. If you need that, one or both of you is holding back or is
seeing something that you should be paying attention to but are
trying to ignore. Yes, many people have been horribly hurt and feel
they need to protect themselves from future risk as a result.
Exactly. You are entering in to a relationship with someone you
fundamentally do not trust. If I'm in a partnership with someone
that may well see me through illness and death, I want to know they
are up for that. I need to know that they are capable of loving me
even when it's painful.
Paul Simon says it this way in
"Look at That":
Ask somebody to love you takes a lot
of nerve. Ask somebody to love you, you've got a lot of nerve.
I couldn't agree more. Think about
what you are agreeing to when you enter in to a marriage. I didn't
the first time. I'm older and wiser now. I get it. So does my
husband.
2. You are married to/marrying an
individual. A finite individual. An evolving individual. An
individual put on this earth to do certain things, learn certain
things.
The reality is your partner is going
to change. This is simply a fact. And it is a fact that each
INDIVIDUAL has to figure out for themselves what this life is going
to mean to them and how they want to walk their path. You have to
get your ego out of the way and love your partner through their
evolution. It is NOT your partner's responsibility to stagnate
because you fear change. It is NOT your partner's responsibility to
stay locked in a life situation (say, a miserable job) to maintain
your status quo.
Once again I have to give it up for
Paul Simon, in his most excellent CD, "You're The One":
Nature gives up shapeless shapes
Clouds and waves and flame But human expectation is that love
remains the same And when it doesn't we point our fingers and blame
blame blame
This whole evolution thing is one
that I have really come to appreciate in the last 5 years. When I
changed my career I put myself on a path that accelerated my own
personal evolution beyond anything I had ever experienced. And it
scared me silly. I was one of those folks who feared growing apart
from my husband. I didn't know how he would deal with my changing.
In my first marriage my husband was overtly resistant to my growth
and change, a predominant factor leading to our divorce. In fact, I
have heard MANY stories of similar situations in other
marriages...including threats of divorce when one or the other
spouse showed signs of becoming too strong or too successful.
The reality for me now is that my
husband is incredibly secure and confident and master of his own
ship. And he expects me to be master of mine. He didn't marry a deck
hand. Not only does he accept, but he nearly insists that I run my
ship through all kinds of uncharted waters and assumes my journey
will change me in a myriad of ways. We both know where the harbor is
but neither of us wants the other to spend life docked in stagnant
water.
3. Your partner is capable of
experiencing an entire array of emotions, many of which will have
nothing to do with you. Not every emotion is a reflection of you or
is something you have to fix. This is a biggie for women especially,
but I see it in men as well. Your spouse is angry about work, you
have to make them happy. Your partner is sad, you feel inadequate
because you were sure you were the source of eternal happiness for
them. You're partner doesn't like their career, you stay in one that
you hate, too, until they get settled in something they enjoy.
One of the things I appreciate the
most about my husband, and myself within this marriage, is that we
really do understand that we have our own paths. We have both spent
many years in the medical field and we are, by nature, participants
in life, so we have seen many heartbreaking things. My husband works
with disabled children, I worked with adults. When you agree to be
present to life, fully present, you expose yourself to great pain
and grief as well as joy. Seeing many people die over the years and
being with people through dark days in their lives has brought home
to each of us that, in the end, it is your own story you are
writing. Love each other all you want, but all you really KNOW is
that you will be there when you die. And maybe that's all. So, there
is a fundamental loneliness to life, existentially speaking.
Everyone you know today can be gone tomorrow. Look, we've all seen
that happen in recent years in this country.
So, recognizing the truth of this
enables Scott and I to have conversations, as fellow humans, about
what the journey looks like from our respective paths. We can admit
to each other that we are lonely sometimes without feeling like we
are making a derogatory comment about our marriage. We can be
frightened, or sad or grieving and allow each other that without
feeling we have failed by not protecting each other from that
experience. Being married doesn't mean that you can protect each
other from life on its most rawly human level.
4. Respect each other's process. Not
everyone copes with everything the same way you do. We all are
impacted by life in different ways. What your partner does is not a
reflection of you or on you. Here are a couple examples: I used to
work in the same hospital with my husband though we never saw each
other during the day. When work was over, I'd meet him at his office
and we'd walk to the car together. Sort of. While I was wanting to
walk with him and hear about his day, he would be racing 10 feet
ahead of me. At first I took that personally (let's give it up for
Don Miguel Ruiz!), but then I got my own ego out of the way and
remembered that this man is running all day long all over the
hospital while I was in one small suite. You can't just slam on the
brakes! So, I allowed him that space to come down from his day and
usually by the time we reached the car I had caught up with him and
by the time we got home we were in sync. Had I made his process
about ME, I would have been cranky, needy, demanding or some other
version of annoying and then he'd have to fix me after a full day of
work. That would just be creepy, and totally unnecessary.
On a few RARE occasions, I have seen
my supremely kind and charming husband nearly pick a fight with
beloved friends. I remember the first time this happened and I was
mortified...he was debating on some taboo subject (you know,
politics or religion) with a really mild-mannered 75 year old friend
of ours. Now, I've been on the opposite side of Debate Boy a time or
two myself and I have to say, it's intense! As a spouse, I felt
apologetic...and wanted to distance myself from the situation.
Again, my ego got in the way and part of me was concerned about the
reflection of this on me. But then, I got a grip and realized that
this man had been involved in a huge string of school conferences
which were extremely contentious and he had to be the peacekeeper.
So, of course, he had all this pressure built up that was about to
make him explode. He needed a good old fashioned argument to
decompress! So, once I got it, I laughed, let him go since our
friend actually was keeping pace just fine. Even if our friend WAS
offended in some way, which he wasn't in the least, it would have
been between the friend and Scott to work it out. It wasn't about
me. Narcissism is just never good for a marriage.
And NO, I have never done anything to
make my husband wince, so we'll leave it at that.
Being committed to another doesn't
mean you become the other. Lives combine but in healthy marriages
they don't become absorbed one into the other. Celebrate each other.
Embrace change. Encourage evolution. Remember where you end and they
begin. In short, love each other as Other.
Laura Young is a personal development
and business coach and collaborator for hire. To learn more about
her, visit http://www.wellspringcoaching.com.
To visit Laura's blog, Musings of an Ant Watcher, go to http://antwatching.blogspot.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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