KEEPING YOURSELF AND YOUR MARRIAGE Part 1.

It seems that for some reason getting married and getting divorced has become a tradition in the United States and the major parts of the world, the NCHS(National Center for Health Statistics) shows that marriage rate is 7.5 per 1000 population and divorce rate is 3.6 per 1000 population and that is in 46 reporting States and D.C.

Do you know that divorce and out of wedlock childbearing is costing taxpayers an alarming $112 billion a year and we are also nearing 40% of children in the United States born out of wedlock. So how can we convince these kids that when they grow up the right thing to do is wait for the right time to do the right thing that they have to be married to have kids of their own and stay married too? Divorce has become a religion in most parts of the world, we can’t even bear to tell our children otherwise because we already practice it and it’s what they grow up with and so to them, if it doesn’t work, don’t try to fix it, just walk away. If this continues like this, in the next couple of years our children will no longer believe in marriage and more children will be born out of wedlock because people will begin to lose faith in marriage and the sacredness that comes with it.

So I want to begin by saying that marriage is an institution, people do not drop out of college because they keep having difficulties with a particular class instead they strive to study harder and make a better grade in that class. Why don’t we see marriage that way? Even as something far more important than a college degree. People should always ask themselves this question before they decide to get married, why do I want to get married? Some people get married for the wrong reasons even if they don’t know it, some get married because it’s seems like the right thing at that particular time, some get married because they are being pressurized to, some get married for financial gains, some get married because they already have a child born out of wedlock while others get married because they are in love. People should want to get married because they feel the need in their lives to have someone who is going to make them better than they already are, someone who can make them whole and fill up every emptiness in them, if you do not feel any void in you that needs to be filled up by someone else then don’t get married because that marriage will not last. If you do believe you are getting married to someone who completes you and is most important to you then it makes it harder to want to get a divorce because no one wants to part with what’s most important to them in life.

The bottom line is you got married; the question now is how do I make it work? You only ask yourself this question if you feel divorce is not a way out, but you can’t feel divorce is not a way out if you get married for the wrong reasons. So to make your marriage work, the first thing you need to do is work on yourself before you work on your marriage, regardless of what you think is wrong with your partner that’s making the marriage go bad. The first question you should ask yourself is, what am I doing wrong that’s making my partner react negatively towards me and our marriage? This might be something you do not see or you might think you are doing everything right as most people think; communication is the key to every successful relationship. Both parties need to learn the need to communicate their needs and express each other’s feelings, no one is perfect and people must always understand that disagreements are bound to rise between couples, even siblings born of the same parents do disagree. Normally I should not give instances like this because this is something I believe every mature individual knows but I can’t help but talk about this as it appears that most mature people do not understand what marriage is about and what makes it work even if they appear to be mature in other aspects of their lives.

When you fail to communicate your feelings and just let it pass by then it makes everything even more complicated, it’s like sweeping dirt underneath your carpet and hoping the top stays clean to the naked eye but what you fail to realize is the more you sweep those dirt underneath your carpet, the more it gets filled up until the carpet won’t be able to take it anymore and eventually the carpet will give way to piled up dirt from over the years. That’s exactly the same thing that happens to marriage without communication and that’s where divorce sets in. Some people would say “Silence is the best answer”, well that can be true but not in marriage. You can’t ignore your partner as it only stirs your marriage to dissolution, one thing that’s very true about marriage is the fact that your partner can either make your life a haven or make it a living hell. So which do you prefer? Think about those moments when your partner when you felt your love was going to last forever, think about what is it you did that made those moments magical and now think about what is it you’re doing that’s making it impossible to live under the same roof with this person. You might say to yourself, “She just woke up one morning and became something else, became a total stranger to me” but let’s face it, nothing happens overnight. Everything takes a gradual process until it fully blossoms to either something wonderful or something terrible.

I would advice everyone to watch their marriage closely if they expect it to work fine, watch it more closely than you watch your 401k account or your stocks because it’s worth a lot more than any of those things.
To be continued…
Regards,
Richard Watchman.