I found this link on facebook, and I disagree with a passion. That could be why my marriage failed.
Oh, wait, that was him becoming a raging and unpredictable alcoholic with emotionally manipulative tendencies… but that’s another story.
This article suggests that marriage is not about the happiness it will bring you, but about the happiness and good it will do others.
I call bullshit.
If someone, anyone were to marry me to simply make me happy, I would be incensed!
A marriage is not something I would enter into to make others happy – my husband, my family, my general public. It IS about me. It IS about my happiness.
And it’s about my partner. It’s about what WE want together. Sure, it’s sometimes about swallowing what I want to say to comfort another, but it’s just as often about calling someone an asshole, because they need to hear that, to grow and become better.
It’s about making someone happy, BECAUSE they make me happy, too. More often than they make me sad, or angry, or hurt, or whatever.
Relationships have rough patches. I know this. And in those times, I would venture to say that I have my fair share of goodness and support and unconditional love to offer. And I’m willing to work.
And yet, I believe marriage and life and love is about being happy together, and the balance is that a marriage (or any relationship) should bring more happiness, joy, passion, sex, giggles, grins, laughs, rainbows and all good things than it does the not-good stuff.
Maybe this man’s marriage isn’t for me. And I’m cool with that. If I do ever get married again, my marriage will be for me. And my partner. And no one else.
And to me, that is how it should be. And how all the really good marriages I personally know are.
