What Makes a Marriage LAST FOREVER?
PC: @jastookes
Ah, marriage. A thing that many girls spend their youngling lives dreaming of, and many men... hardly think of until it’s time? For those of us born in the 90’s, you may have been noticing more and more of your old friends, classmates, and coworkers putting that ring finger on and sailing off into the sunset. And as a sucker for romance stories, it truly tickles my heart strings.
However, lately my friends and I have been getting into discussions about the realities of marriage. Some of us, with parents who never married, parents who divorced, and parents who have been together for decades. Yet we all come to the same conclusion: it isn’t about love.
Let me scratch that. It IS about love, but not that ooey gooey romantic, i’m-infatuated-with-you kind of love. Because reality is, we are all only humans, and that kind of love fades. And when it does, how are you seeing the person sitting in front of you? With what kind of lens are you judging that person? I have seen far too often, even at my young age, people putting their partners up on pedestals at the beginning of their relationship, only to be disappointed when said person doesn’t meet that high standard anymore.
Now I know marriage is not for everyone, and thank god for the modern age where women don’t HAVE to marry. But for the sake of this article let’s talk about those (myself hopefully one day included) who do marry. We marry with the intent to stay married, right? So what is it that separates those who stay together and those who don’t?
And the answer, from our personal opinions, is simple: it’s just business. Business, with love. If you’re in the right business, you will love it anyway. But just like any business, there’s compromise and tough fluctuations in the year. It’s a partnership where the two must bring in different strengths to make a whole. There’s a bigger end goal, and both have to work towards it. When one is slacking for some time, the other must pick it up, and vice versa. Business is understanding that the partner has strengths and weaknesses, and we do not push the other down for having said weaknesses. You work and you build on this business together and when done right, the respect and love grows with it.
None of this is to say that love doesn’t play a role in marriage. You must have a basis of love to want to even go into business together. It’s what keeps you empathetic and forgiving throughout the process. I think, if your “business” has a common goal that’s higher than you or your partner, the marriage will likely succeed. If we place “the goal” in each other, then we will end up picking at each other’s every detail trying to make the other more perfect, more happy, more loving, but ultimately, destroying.
