Happily Ever After

Growing up in the wild sixties when the importance of being married was "obeyed" and the fairy tale of living happily together forever was indoctrinated, I naively believed that when I fell in love and married at sixteen years old, that I would be living this dream. After thirty - nine and a half years, though, I am much more realistic to say the least! Expecting to "Marry Prince Charming and live happily ever after" is an unrealistic illusion.

Also, there are differences between the day to day living and fantasy world I created. In early marriage, I was full of optimism, expecting my new husband to be perfect in every way. For a while, he filled my wishes until the harshness of the reality of day to day living enabled my fantasy world to start crumbling.

For instance, husband left his dirty, stinky clothes around the house for me to pick up and wash. And when he ill-mannerly smacked his lips when he ate my cooked meals, I wanted to lash out at him and I do not have a clue as to what happened to make me hate that sound, but it triggered a negative response in me. Marrying and living with a man has shown me that I really did create a happily every after in my childhood that dissolved itself along the married years.

Incidentally, our arguments over trivial issues, such as how loud the TV should be or who would clean the bathtub, led to my disenchantment of the marriage ideal.When I expected him to know my every need and he had his own, I became angry. When I wanted his undivided attention and he was tired from his workday and fell asleep, he was not living up to my expectation of what Mr. Right should be.

My immature thinking enabled my disappointments in the marriage in the early years. As the years went by, I realized how immature and young I really was when I got married. As we lived together balancing finances, intimacy, and later, child rearing , the reality of the fallacy of living happily after fell by the wayside. I saw that I was a child when I made that lifetime commitment to love and cherish one man til deal do us part. I had wanted desperately to believe that playing house and taking care of Prince Charming was the ultimate perfection, but in reality, it made me forget that I had any identity as an individual.

Going one step more, I believed that love was the best reason for commitment to a marriage. Love is a oneness of affection, care, concern, and faith in the relationship. It is a basis for a lifetime together, sharing responsibilities and fulfilling commitment to one another. Love is not expecting the other person to take care of one anothers needs.

In fact, marriage is not making a partner responsible for cleaning up after the others' messes, nor is it one person being a slave to the other. Affection is not an ordeal with conditions upon it. Trust is not being uncertain about what a partner is going to act like. Care is not verbally, emotionally, and mentally abusing ones companion. Concern is not ignoring what a wife or husband has to say.

In the end, solid, long term relationships are built on respect, communication, and growing together instead of apart. The relationship does not just happen, it is created and must have both individuals acting alone to participate in the union that marriage truly is. It is far better to have risked and grown that to have let fear dominate and end up alone.