The divorce rate continues to hover around 50%. There is even a belief among some that if marriage becomes too much work or is too difficult or if you are not happy enough, get a divorce.
My opinion of this idea: why take the easy way out?
Marriage is work. Marriage is struggle. But then again, any close relationship is. And for that matter, so is anything of value in life.
There are times I have been asked,
“What makes a marriage last?”
“What’s the secret to a lasting marriage?”
The answer is actually simple (simple is not to be confused with easy).
Before I divulge the answer, let’s tackle a few marriage myths.
Thanks to popular press and Hollywood, the work involved in marriage is poorly displayed. Many people seem to think that marriage will be a lifelong romantic escapade along the shore at sunset before returning home for the nightly passionate adventure enveloped in silk sheets with your lover. I know you’ve bought into this idea somewhat if you can easily complete this phrase: “and they all lived…”
The honeymoon is over, morning breath has set in, your partner sees you for who you are, plus you see your partner more for who they are. You realize that marriage requires more of you. The dream of marriage has been replaced with the reality of marriage. You and your spouse don’t see eye to eye on everything. You’ve slept on the couch at least once in your married life. There has been a roller coaster of feelings. Close. Distant. Passion. Boredom. Joy. Sadness.
When you get right down to it, marriage is not about happiness. Marriage is about two people growing up and becoming better humans.
Nowhere else are we faced with the task of growth more than marriage.
So what’s the secret to making marriage last?
Two people who choose to stay married. That’s it.
Marriage is choice. Choice of partner, choice of self, choice of growth, even choice of passion and adventure.
While this may at first appear simplistic, it should be.
When you view what’s going on in your marriage as a process for growth and experiencing more in life, it makes the choice simple.
Most of the time, we focus on our partner and our desire for them to change or do something different. This is focusing on something we can’t control. If we decide to grow, do something different, change the things we don’t like about ourselves, we take charge of our own life as well as our relationship.
With everything that happens to us in life and love, how you view it will determine the outcome. When you have times of disagreement, could it really be a time to grow closer? Or a time to understand more about your spouse? When you feel your partner pulling away, maybe it’s an opportunity to engage your partner in a better way.
(photo source)
I don’t think there’s any way for me to possibly agree more!
I’ve only been married for almost two years, but it has been two years where my wife has struggled greatly with obsessive-compulsive disorder, to the point of being hospitalized last summer (our first year of marriage).
We were talking about how far we’ve come in the OCD struggle the other day, and, despite how hard it has been, I think the struggle could have been one of the best things to happen to us, because we learned real quickly that marriage is a choice to keep loving even when things are hard – a opportunity to GROW UP!
I was naive enough before I got married to buy into the happily ever after mentality. I thought that the honeymoon phase would last forever. After 6 months, I learned that marriage is a choice and Love is a choice. Crap happens, but you learn from it and grow as people and as a couple.
Agree, agree, agree! I am sure that when we welcome those “opportunities” to grow closer to our spouse rather than jumping ship when things are tough or we just don’t LIKE the person we promised to love for a lifetime and we choose to love them through it… that is when we open the door for a greater happiness, maturity, and satisfaction with our lives.
I’m so in agreement! This post reminds me of the 4 month premarital classes my husband and I took before we got married. We’ve just passed the 1st year mark, and all that you said is true. Marriage is a choice and it is work!
My favorite line “While this may at first appear simplistic, it should be.” because it made me laugh while thinking about a serious topic. That is the way it should be!
This is the exact idea that I have about marriage. My husband and I are happily married and as any couple we have our ups and downs. However, I know that he is the right person for me because I feel that we can grow together and grow old together too.
It is amazing how simple steps like communication, trust and honesty strengthen the marriage and help two people become one.
Thanks for a great blog here, Corey! I have discovered it just recently and I feel that this is a very balanced and close to my beliefs place.
One more thing I would add to your secret – and I think it’s very important because it’s the greatest mistake we do – right after wedding we’re head over heels in love – and we live rather with the idealistic vision of our spouse, than with the actual real person. The sooner we drop our “vision” and see “the real person”, the better for us and our marriage. That’s just my 0,02$
greets from Poland
J.
Amen!
First let me say – great article and I love this blog.
Now let me say, no amount of work can save a marriage where there is abuse (physical, emotional or verbal) and where to keep the peace, you cannot be yourself. Here, growing up might require a break up. This failure is often hard to accept and some of us who are divorced, never ever wanted to be divorced. As a parent, I feel my most important role is to model for my children. Modeling the acceptance or enabling of abusive behavior is not a good thing, especially if you are trying to break the cycle.
Lastly, thank you Corey. As I try to ensure a better example for my children in this next phase, this and many of the other article are so helpful.
I’d tweak your thesis just a tiny bit — it’s not choosing to stay married, but choosing to love that is the key. (Eric Frohm?). I’ve seen couples “successfully” stay married by conducting essentially two different lives in parallel, with no sharing or growth.
Well said! Thanks for sharing.
Corey –
Thanks for the great reminder! I need a recalibration every once in a while! The choice to ‘lean in’ instead of eject is one that isn’t the most popular – but the best in the long run for the relationship
Thanks Corey!
It didn’t take long for me to realize that the white knight was not coming. There were times that I wanted to jump ship, but knew I couldn’t. Commitment was everything. In all honesty, I think it was around year 17 that I felt we were moving in closer accord. It’s been 38 years this July 8. How thankful I am that I stayed with it. (I’m sure he is, too!)
Marriage is not about being in love it is about loving. It is our acted not being acted upon, and this act makes you, him and the world a better place.
I have been fully committed to my husband and to my marriage. We’ve been married for almost 16 years and together for over 20 years. I want my marriage to work – I married someone I deeply love and who is my best friend – but love is not enough. Marriage is a lot of work.
We have three beautiful kids together — but we are not happy. I agree with your statement that marriage is not about happiness, but about two people growing up and becoming a better humans – but you should be happy during this process, right? What do you do though when you have grown up and you seem to be all alone?
I know my husband loves me, but he is so worried about finances — and that is all he thinks about. He’s a workaholic. I feel abandoned. How long do you just “stick it out”? How do you continue to set a good example for your kids when you are miserable? Separation or divorce is not something I want, but I am not sure what else to do.
I completely agree with this article! Staying married and lovingly committed is a choice. Sometimes people feel as if they married “the wrong person,” when perhaps the real issue is that they have not developed the skills to be married. It is true that with time that the intense sexual fireworks sparks you may have had with your partner at the onset of your relationship may have faded with time. That’s totally normal for long-term relationships. Fireworks sparks mostly get kindled by new love. Deeper feelings of love, appreciation, and caring, as opposed to the sparks of new love excitement, come from how you look at your partner. Focus on his positives and you will feel affection. Focus on what you don’t like and feelings of affection will dissipate. Feelings of love also grow with sharing. Talking about personal issues, sharing what has gone on in your work days, doing fun things together—sharing builds affectionate bonds. Relationships “work out” when couples talk together quietly and cooperatively to resolve their differences. That is, relationships don’t “work out.” Partners work out problems. They do this by talking through their concerns and finding mutually agreeable solutions.
Thanks for posting this. I think that if more young people were aware of this BEFORE getting married, there might be a lower divorce rate today. We have been discussing points like this in our Young Married’s bible study. Knowing that love is a choice gives us something to work together for instead of moving on when things just aren’t going as well as we hoped.
While I agree with the idea that you need to put some effort into having a long and successful marriage, I think the idea of staying together “forever” is kind of like “lived happily ever after”. Great in theory but not always possible in reality. As you (and your partner) grow up the things that were important to you in your youth no longer have the same meaning, while at the same time things that you never even thought about become a bigger part of your life.
I am not the same person at 44 that I was at 24 when I met my ex-wife (yup, you guessed it – divorced), and neither is she. Neither one of us is evil or mean-spirited, just as we grew-up we grew into much different people than who we were and who we thought we would be.
We made it 14 years and ended our marriage – we share parenting responsibilities for our two teen-age daughters and get along better now then we did for much of our marriage. We live a few miles apart and talk more now then we did then. We are one of the few sets of parents that participate in our children’s lives – many of the married couples “send” either the mother or the father.
Just because you work hard at something it doesn’t mean you will be successful, and not being successful shouldn’t be considered a failure. She has remarried and I have been in a long-term relationship since the divorce – both of us grew-up together and then realized that we weren’t happy (not sure why you can’t be happy too). We both found someone in our “older years” that makes us happy and we will continue to grow into better people with them during the next phase of our lives.
I also think we are better parents and the girls see two parents that work together to raise them and two relationships that are working much better than the one they were being exposed to during their early years. Again, I think that’s a plus.
Sometimes growing up means you have to make decisions that are difficult at first, but absolutely right on in the long run. I think if we spent as much time and effort making sure those that get divorced with children develop a strong (extended) family as we do telling them that marriage is work and if it doesn’t last you didn’t work hard enough we would be better off.
How beautifully expressed.
I really like the emphasis on TWO people who choose to stay married. All too often folks fall into the trap of thinking that just because they’re married they become more of one person. No the joy of, and the key to success in marriage is finding the strength in two people each pulling together, both to grow themselves and to grow as a couple.
That’s the core of everything we teach at PowerofTwoMarriage.com.
First, you have to believe that God must be the center of everything. Second, you have to love each other unconditionally. Third, you must have children or something that binds you together. All others like trust, commitment, etc. will be an outcome of this three. But of course, this is from my experience of being married for four years. I am so happy with my married life because I have a very supportive husband and adorable kids.
First off, I highly respect all the comments here, and I read them all. This is a good subject, but a rotten one. It’s not even a subject at all, but and ancient problem, since God created man. An issue as old as mankind itself. It’s a problem that unless a man knows his true identity, only vanished when the man, himself, is 6 feet below the ground. We have to mature from this, as human beings. I can share you my opinion, but it may confuse you, but I’ll just share you some good Web page links.
I found these Web pages, and they really are true and down to earth explanation, and personal experiences. I realized no matter how I put it, and regardless whether two selfish bodies fell in love so dearly and bound by the strongest belt made of the finest material on earth, it will eventually breaks; unless the belt is made of material directly come from Most High–from the One Universal Love that has shared ITs love to men–the souls become one, bound by the Holy Spirit that is shared in both heaven and earth–eternal love–one may go before the other, but it will reunite in the eternal place.
Here are the links:
If you just want understand relationship, read this first: http://www.personal-development-coach.net/soul-ties.html
If you want to go further, as to understand who you are,read this as well: http://www.facebook.com/pages/LIGHT-IS-LIFE/130405680394131?sk=info
I didn’t realize how obtuse is the mind of the author of this article to moderate and removed my post yesterday. What happened to open-mind attitude that we are suppose to practice? By suppressing my thoughts, I found it amusing with relief that your article is so ancient and has not evolved to the true meaning and kind of relationship the Creator had tried to teach. I referenced the word “Creator” but I am actually an Atheist, but it is because there is no tangible way to express the Divine Energy that powers you and me, and the rest of mankind. Trust me, time can only tell that you’ll realize your article is not helping but even confusing and clouding people to see the light.
sorry, and my apology for the last comment. i posted the last comment because i did not see my original comment. i was following it close because i wanted to know if people, really, are reading this. but then after i posted a follow-up comment, there, my original comment showed up–weird!
please remove the last one and, again, my apology. thanks.