Am I in this Relationship for the Right Reasons?

“If you marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons, then no matter how hard you work, it's never going to work, because then you have to completely change yourself, completely change them, completely – by that time, you're both dead.” Anne Bancroft

We say our wedding vows with the idea in mind that this is right and forever. Or we should. The way things work out, though, I wonder how many said them while their fingers were crossed. I know of a marriage that only lasted a week. In a perfect world, we would marry the right person for the right reason and nothing bad would ever happen.

There are times when you look around you and it seems that everyone has what you don’t. In our twenties and thirties, everyone we know is pairing up, getting married, and having babies. Every month, there is another wedding to go to and the gauntlet of friends and family asking when you are going to tie the knot. It starts to wear on you.

There is probably only one right reason to marry: we love someone, they are the right person, we are both complete and want the same things out of life. The divorce rate tells me many people are marrying for the wrong reasons. Dr. Barbara De Angelis has outlined seven major wrong reasons to enter a relationship: pressure, loneliness, sexual need, distraction from one’s life, avoidance of growing up, to fill an emptiness, and guilt. These are a good start, but there are more.

Catfish exploit the wrong reasons to be in a relationship; this is why they are so successful. They come on strong and say all the right things. They love bomb us. They see the weakness – that part of us that thinks everything will be so much better as part of a couple – and use that to their advantage.

It is not just these internet lurings where our weaknesses cause problems. It happens every time we fall into the trap of allowing our insecurities to affect our choice of partner in any area of our life. I had a question earlier asking: ‘why this person?’ Now, we need to look inward and ask: ‘why do I want to marry?’ We should want to and not need to. Sometimes, we do not know ourselves why we are doing what we are or, perhaps, we do but are pushing it so far from our conscious mind and working hard to sell a different story.

When we need something, we are approaching the situation from the point of desperation – an ‘any port in a storm’ sort of mentality. The criminal justice system is clogged with people who were desperate – for a fix, for money... If you watch court shows, you see people who turn to family and friends when they are in a bind. While they are desperate, they make all these promises about what they will follow through on if they get help now. Turns out, once they are no longer desperate, they aren’t so motivated to do what was promised.

I am convinced divorce lawyers are making a good living based on people who married because they were desperate, because of the needs created by the wrong reasons. I am looking in the mirror as I write this. My biological clock was ringing like a fire alarm. Something I had, to that point, thought a myth because I didn’t even want children up to that point.

This piece of advice may strike terror in the hearts of some, but it is true...it is better to be alone than with the wrong person. Do not be an ‘any port in a storm’ kind of person. If you are in it for the wrong reasons, you will stay unhappily married and unfulfilled or end up divorced. A divorce when you have married for the wrong reasons hurts as much as marrying for the right reasons. And don’t you deserve so much better?