We all have a story of how we met our romantic partner and the road that led us down the aisle, but will the story end in a fairy tale happily ever after?
Are you looking closely and asking the right questions, especially those that are hard? Or are you crossing your fingers and saying that love is, to quote the Beatles, all you need. Daphne Kingma, based on observations through her counselling practice, feels that too many people view marriage as a goal without the thought and understanding of what happens after the dreamed about wedding.
This is probably the most important question you should ask before you say "I will". All other questions I will pose, I believe, are merely subsets of this, thoughts to ponder on your way to answer this first question. Science still doesn’t completely understand what attracts us to one person over another, so there is no easy answer to who we should marry...probably there are more answers to who we should not.
The first answer you’re compelled to give to this question is likely going to be because you love them and they love you. If you were to probe for a deeper answer, though, what would you get? If you were challenged to describe in one sentence the reason you want to marry your partner, without using the word love, could you do it?
Being in love – that wild passionate, 'can't eat, can't sleep' early manifestation of attraction to another person is akin to being drunk on hormones and our bodies’ bonding chemicals. Would you want to sign a contract on a multi-million dollar business deal when you are drunk or high? No, and yet we enter the contract of marriage this way. A twenty-four hour, seven days a week for eternity contract. To not end up in court when this business deal comes to a traumatic end, we need to employ our brain.
Nowadays people do research on everything: which garage to take our car to, the rating for a toaster, a review of a restaurant... The Internet makes it easy, but I still see people also asking friends and coworkers their opinion. Yet when it comes to romantic relationships we mostly go on blind faith. We never sit down and analyze what it is underneath the love when we strip it down to base elements.
Sometimes this can be a very difficult question to answer honestly. In an ideal world we would have a buffet to choose from and get exactly what we want. In realty, sometimes our options are few. Are they the first person to ask and you feel you better grab on in case there is no one else? Sometimes we would rather be with virtually anyone then be alone.
No one sets out to marry with the thought in mind that down the road they will go through a bitter break-up. Ask yourself these things: Would you marry them if they had no money? If they were in poor health? Will we be able to sustain things long term?
Part of this question should be do you want to be with them or do they fill a need? Do they complete you? This is reminiscent of a movie scene and while it seems terribly romantic we should be a whole person in our own right. We should be capable of navigating our world independently. Marriages end every day or people die unexpectedly. If the worst happened, would needing someone leave you unable to carry on?
Does your partner possess qualities you wish you had? If your childhood was drama-filled are you drawn to someone who is calm with a vanilla life? If you don't like to cook and clean do you look for someone domestic? It is okay to want to be with someone who balances us. Look down the road and ask will it become too much if the person we chose was adventurous to balance our hermit nature and we just can't handle one more safari?
We also need to expect and be prepared for the change that is all a part of growth. People grow and change all life long. Neuroscientist Francesca Happe states the brain is very plastic and everything you learn and experience changes your brain. Our brains in fact are still growing until we are about twenty-five years of age. Do you as a couple have what it takes to maintain a healthy relationship when you are both changing? George Blair West tells us our personality in our twenties does not correlate to who we are at fifty. If you want to be sitting in a rocking chair at the nursing home holding hands with the one you love today you need to be ready to fall in love again each day with the new person your mate has become.
Are the bonds that bind you strong enough to withstand the storms that inevitably will blow your way? It is a rookie mistake to enter marriage thinking it will be easy. It takes work, compromise, and the ability to bend so your relationship does not break. There needs to be a strong foundation. We should not build a house on the sand near the shore and expect to come home each day and find our house exactly where we left it. This is how many marriages work when we let our heart lead without input from our brain. Michael French in his book, Why Men Fall Out Of Love, poses “... what would happen if the qualities that bond you...suddenly disappear”
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