One Woman s View: Living happily ever after
Contributing writer
This seems to be a big summer for weddings. On June 11 I went to two in one day, and I heard of at least two others in the area. I'll be attending at least two weddings later in the summer. Perhaps this is as good time as any to offer some advice about living happily ever after. I don't claim to be an expert in marriage counseling. However, I did survive 33 years of marriage to the same man, so I may have learned a little bit along the way.
The first point to understand about living happily ever after is that you won't. Even the best and strongest marriages go through some rocky patches. A friend of mine commented, "I always love my husband, but I don't always like him very much." This is par for the course. I hope the advice I'm offering may help avoid some of the problems and help you endure the others.
Never marry anybody on the assumption he/she is going to change. As the years pass both of you will change, but not necessarily in the ways you want. I noticed in courtship that my future husband was a very private person who did not share much of his life with anyone.
"When I am his wife, he will be more open with me," I thought. Wrong!
He, on the other hand, did not consider my housekeeping up to his standards and let me know it. I honestly intended to do better after marriage. The first few years when I had health and energy, I did improve, but eventually regressed into my slovenly habits.
If you have traits which you know annoy your partner, try to improve. However, if your partner has any faults you think you cannot live with, break the engagement.
During the engagement period, talk over the major issues which are likely to arise in marriage. Yes, it is more fun to spend your time together enjoying each other's company and doing some serious necking, but you can be blind-sided with some very painful problems later on. A good premarital counselor will help you identify issues which need to be aired.
I once knew an engaged couple who belonged to two different churches. The situation concerned the bride-to-be enough that she asked me for advice — which she apparently did not really want. I presented every option I could think of, but she found none of them satisfactory. I suggested that perhaps they should break it off, but that was even less satisfactory. They married with the blithe assumption everything would work out. Perhaps predictably, the marriage ended in divorce a few years later.
It is easy to find yourself faced with disagreements you did not expect because each partner enters marriage with a set of expectations to be taken for granted. Most problems result from the obvious fact that husband and wife were reared in two different families.
For example, one spouse may have had parents who were equal partners, while the other came from a home where the father was the HEAD OF THE HOUSE in capital letters. They will then need to talk over their separate roles and reach some common ground.
My husband and I made one crucial mistake I hope other couples will avoid. He took care of all our business affairs and thought I did not need to know anything about them. Since I definitely do not enjoy struggling with such matters, I made little protest.
When my husband fell victim to dementia, neither he nor I knew what was going on. Since accounts were in his name, the bank staff was not allowed to tell me anything. We went through a very bad time which could have easily been prevented.
I suppose in most marriages one spouse is more capable than the other in business matters, but make sure you both know such things as the location of important papers, status of bank accounts, and debts owed. If separate checking accounts are more convenient, arrange to have access to each other's accounts in emergencies.
Most important of all, consider your marriage a life-long commitment. A young relative once announced her marriage to me with the remark, "We'd been going together for quite a while, so we decided to give it a try." The marriage did not last long.
A new hobby is something you can "give a try." Perhaps even a change of residence or a new career direction can be approached that way. Marriage needs to be forever. I confess that when I stood at the altar on my wedding day and heard all the promises I was making, I was scared to death. But I made those promises and did my level best to keep them.
There are very few valid reasons to abandon a marriage, such as abuse or unfaithfulness of a spouse. People who throw away a marriage for lesser reasons usually are not happier outside the marriage. Someone has said the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence; it is greener where it has been watered and fertilized. Careful tending of the marriage you have will produce far better results than junking it and starting over.
