Three weeks ago, I posted about married men who have girlfriends and discussed some of the reasons and consequences causing and resulting from this action. I received a great feedback from the readers; one comment in particular caught my attention and inspired this post.
When two people come together and decide that they want to spend the rest of their lives together, they do not put in their forecast that they will end up leaving each other. They have high hopes of a life full of love and warmth; they want to start a family and be together and live happily ever after. Isn't that why people get married in the first place? To be with someone they love and start a family? Isn't that the reason behind considering death to be the only thing that can separate them? Until death do us part?
What if death does not refer to one of them? What if death refers to their relationship, their love, their passion, their togetherness? What happens when one of them loses interest in nurturing and maintaining the relationship?
Love alone is not enough to make the marriage work and succeed and I believe that we all have reached this conclusion from what we hear, see and experience first hand. What does make the marriage work and succeed though, is the persistence from both partners and their commitment to the each other and the relationship. Marriage needs a lot of work and takes so much effort from both of them, and they are obligated to work together as a team, because if one of them builds and the other destroys, the marriage is doomed to fail even if only behind closed doors.
The most fatal mistake that couples commit is the lack of communication or even its mere inexistence. When the couple do not talk and communicate, they will be alienating one another and eventually grow apart. Once this happens; each one of them moves on in a different direction on his/her own, they only share kids, house, sleeping space, couch, expenses and most of all share fights.
Years pass them by and the love seed that they once dreamed of to grow into a beautiful tree has dried; they did not give it attention and certainly did not nurture. Then comes along the blame game; he thinks it is her fault because she got distracted by her career, kids, house … etc. and never gave him, her husband, the kind of attention he wanted and therefore; he sought this attention with someone else, and she thinks that it is his fault for not spending enough time with her or the kids, he spends most of his time out of the house, he cares more about a football game than talking to her or taking her out and therefore; she pours her attention on things that give her satisfaction and the cycle never ends.
If you feel trapped in your own marriage; it is much better that you sit down with your spouse and talk about what is bothering you, open up and be honest. God has created man and woman in a way that they complement each other, they are not to challenge each other, they are not to overpower one another, but they are to live in harmony and peace, they have to work together as a team to make this work for both of them and for the sake of their family. If and when they reach a stage where they lost interest in one another, the only person they need to talk to, is the spouse and no one else. They owe it to one another to give a chance to make things better and try to rekindle the love flame, to reconnect and to be a family one more time.
If after all the effort, they still feel like strangers, maybe it is better for everyone that they move on separately and search for happiness elsewhere. If kids are the only reason holding them together; it is the worst possible reason to build a successful marriage and kids will not appreciate it.
Some of you might say: it is easy for me to say as I have not been in the situation. This might be true; but I cannot imagine myself stuck in a marriage that does not satisfy me in every possible way and not say anything about it.
If you are facing a problem with your spouse; going to a friend or a relative to rant about it is not a solution, making a decision to be unfaithful and move into another relationship will only make things worse, letting your soul die and turn into a machine that does emotionless chores under the name of obligations will kill every possible hope for this marriage to ever succeed.
Marriage is tough enough; life itself is hard and needs a lot of effort and work to pull through; don’t lose your best ally, your best friend, your loved one, your spouse. Do not lose your way and wander in the life maze without someone holding your hand to support you; God knows it is hard to do all this alone!
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from Jordan