“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.” Lee Child
Evolutionary study suggests that couples came together to ensure that their children survive to pass on their genes. While, once this was necessary, society has put in place safeguards, so now the community helps in this regard. Marriage has come to mean something else.
We now marry for happy ever after. And a lot of bad reasons. We just have no idea what comes after the fairy tale wedding. Too often, the wedding alone is the goal. Television shows abound about the wedding. There is no reality show called, “Who does the dishes?” that follows newly married couples struggling to split up housework. We have been fed too many romantic notions about love and marriage and lack a clear picture of what love is like over a lifetime.
People come out of divorce finding that they lack certain skills or financial means. The sad truth is: too many women and children live in poverty after divorce. I know no one reading thinks that this will happen to them – I know from personal experience, that person was me. Right up to the end. You may not change, but your partner may. And where does that leave you?
While you have a fifty percent chance of your marriage ending, you have an even higher chance that something bad will happen. When will a job loss, critical illness, or accident befall your household? If you reach your deathbed without such a hardship, you need to consider yourself very blessed. Within the span of a year, three women in my neighbourhood suffered the death of their husbands. Not unusual if these were seniors, but these were women in their thirties and forties. We never know when a crisis will hit, so we should have the skills necessary to run our life independently.
Partnerships work best when we are whole people. When we have the skills to take care of ourselves. Marriage is hard, even though you may love each other completely. People change, love changes, and life throws a lot at us. Having an ability to adapt and a wide skill set is hugely beneficial in helping you navigate the twist and turns life can have.
A neighbour suffered through a period when her husband was hospitalized. She confessed she had never spent a night away from him since they became a couple, some fifteen years earlier. She could not sleep without him there.
A marriage should be a coming together of complete people, not people who need completing. After a divorce, men tell me they did not know how to put a ponytail in their daughters’ hair or sew on a button. Women tell me they did not know what a furnace filter was or where the shut-off valve was for the house water supply. When couples come together for a need – financial, lacking skills, emotional help, etc. – we have a scenario where there could be imbalance in the relationship.
Just because you can do everything, doesn’t mean you have to or necessarily should. My view of a relationship is that we, as a team, work with our strengths. My daughters played soccer and, standing on the sidelines, it is clear that to win, the team needs to put players where they excel. My daughter would not have been efficient in the goal, but she sure was great at defence. I have rebuilt a transmission, but I would rather bake a birthday cake.
When I was married, one of the bathrooms needed a small repair. Once the materials were purchased, I asked my spouse when it would get done. ‘Whenever you do it,’ he replied, because I needed to be able to do these things for myself. I did, it took probably twice as long as it would for someone skilled in these sort of things, but it was a good job. That same afternoon, he asked me to do a mending job on a piece of his clothing, failing to see the irony in the situation.
If you see yourself in this missive, there is an easy fix, even if you feel you will never divorce. Ask your spouse to show you how to do the things you do not know. A last and really important reason to be as complete a person as possible within a coupling: it makes for a stronger relationship.
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