Is Your Marriage Successful?

So often, we see couples that seem to have it all one day, and are divorced the next. They have the big house, the beautiful kids, the successful careers, and everything that marriage counselors claim we need today in order to survive marriage. However, it doesn't matter. The marriage fails regardless. Why? Well, things got boring. Life wasn't as exciting as it seemed like it would be when they both exchanged their "eternal" vows. It happens every single time. Some couples stay married convinced that this is just a part of life, and others split up and move on in hopes of finding something better. The latter usually end up marrying again, becoming unhappy, and repeating the divorce process. Some people spend their entire lives going through this vicious cycle. Why? They are looking for a lifestyle that does not exist.

I couldn't say for sure whether it is caused by movies, romance novels, pornography, or any other fictional representation of real life, but most of us go into our first marriages thinking that we will be different from the rest of the world. We will never let money come between us and our spouses, we will always make time for each other, and we will keep romance alive forever, even after we've both gained fifty pounds and start to resemble are parents. It's a worthy ambition, but it's a little silly at the same time. Life doesn't ask us for our preferences. Unexpected children can happen, no matter how many precautions you take. Job losses and downsizing can happen, no matter how great of an employee you are. And finally, no matter how much in love you are with your spouse, one day you will look at another person of the opposite sex and find them attractive. You can bank on it.

The great news is, it's all ok. Every last bit of it is to be expected. You see, sometime during the last century we all adopted this fairy tale notion that life just instantly become beautiful and simple when we fall in love. Then, of course, when problems arise, we panic. We think to ourselves, "Oh goodness, we keep arguing about the same things over and over again, so we must be headed straight for divorce court." My question is, who ever told us to expect perfect marital bliss? Who ever told us that we had to be perfect in order to have a successful marriage? Even more importantly, who decides what a "successful" marriage is? If two people are miserable together, but they just happen to stay together for fifty years until one of them dies, is that a success? Or, if two people have ten blissful years of a real, loving marriage together until they simply decide their lives are going in a different direction and they then peacefully separate, was their marriage successful?

The key to a "successful" marriage, in my opinion, is understanding that no one can define what success is but you. To me, a couple that is miserable together forever is not successful simply because they never signed any divorce papers. You can be divorced in your heart without ever having that emotional separation being legally recognized. On the other hand, I believe that a marriage can be very beneficial to a couple for as long as it lasts, even if it ends up not working out. In other words, if a couple is completely happy for twenty years, and then they have one bad year that they simply can't recover from and decide to separate because of it, does that mean that they wasted twenty years of each other's lives? Of course it doesn't.

Marriage is meant to bring fulfillment through a lasting emotional bond. Spouses are meant to support each other in times of need, to believe in each other, and to bring out the best in each other. Yes, they are also great for providing romance, if you can figure out how to squeeze any in, but that was never meant to be the main objective of marriage. The point is to spend the rest of your life with someone that you love, instead of alone, and being able to create a family with them. Granted, you must also define what a family is, whether it is you, your spouse, and four children, or just the both of you and your black lab. The thing that has so many of us believing that our marriages are failing is that we are using someone else's definition of success as our own. We must begin to understand that marriage is based on romance, yes, but it is kept alive through love (which doesn't necessarily have a strong connection to romance). If you go into a marriage for the sake of being forever pampered and being able to walk around with butterflies in your stomach at all times, you're going to be sorely disappointed. While a marriage should not be completely without these moments, you need to ask yourself how often it is that you have romantic episodes in your day to day routine right now, while you're single (or before you were married). Probably not very often. Still, for some reason there are so many couples out there who are devastated because their marriages aren't bringing them absolute and total fulfillment during each moment of the day.

So what's the remedy? It is essential that we begin to educate married couples, as well as those considering marriage, on what they should really try to gain from their marriages. Should you expect to never have a dull moment? Should your spouse always be in a romantic frame of mind? Should you expect to never argue bitterly over whose turn it is to take out the trash? Good luck with that. Instead, be willing to take a few hits along the way in order to stay with the one you have a deep emotional connection with. Be willing to put up with their bad habits (you have your own, by they way). No matter how perfect a person may seem, you will always soon find otherwise. So what should you really expect and demand from your marriage? Well, first of all, you should demand unconditional love, without abusing it. You must learn to master accepting your partner's love no matter what you do, while also being able to respect their feelings and not giving in to the temptation to abuse that trust that they have in you. Secondly, you have to be willing to accept the good with the bad. Yes, your prince charming may refuse to grow up. But isn't it possible that that is part of what attracted you to him to begin with? Yes, your princess will occasional remind you of your mother in the way that she expects you to keep a clean home. But would you rather her be a slob? When you think you absolutely cannot handle one more moment of your spouse's annoying quirks, ask yourself if you would really rather have them cut out of your life forever, or if you would really rather have them be perfect. Wouldn't that be a tad boring? Oh, and I have news for you.....your spouse probably has to put in a little effort to deal with you from time to time as well.

Hopefully, if all goes well, your marriage will give you something to smile about at least once every day, which is more than most people can say that they get from anything in life. If everything goes as planned, you'll look back on your life one day and be glad for the memories you have with your spouse. And if one day you find that the both of you really just are not going in the same direction any longer, and that neither of you are willing to compromise anymore, don't rule out the possibility that you still may have been a success in some sense. Work on enriching each other's lives, give all you have to give, and one day you will be able to look back and say that you have nothing to regret.