In this mad modern world, it seems like traditional, old values are being trashed right and left. Mostly this is good and natural, changes and evolution are inevitable. But on other occasions, such as today’s topic, I fail to see the grandness of some of the movements out there.
So, why haven’t we made a prenup?
1. Marriage is a contract
For both me and my husband marriage was a very serious step to take. We thought it through in our lives, even before we met, and we stepped into it knowing full-well that it is not something we can just run away from the first thing when a storm rises. We pledged each other that we would be there, we would work for the benefit of the family, and for the benefit of us.
Whatever happened that this is no longer the norm, instead, people have this weird mentality of entitlement and privilege. We choose our spouses, more often than not anyway, and as far as I can see the only reason I would turn my back on my husband is if he would betray me on a core level. Which he will not do. People need to stop making their significant others the face of all evil from the beginning. Give your husband (or wife) prospect the benefit of the doubt for heaven’s sake. Maybe they won’t be a complete douche.
Why would you enter into a contract such as marriage anyway, if you are not planning to take it seriously in the first place? By serious, I mean that the mentality has to change from a single-mind to a spouse-mind. We now do things for each other, not only ourselves, which seems to be baffling to people in this wave of independence.
You have agreed to take care of your spouse, to fulfill their needs, to love, and to hold. Are you not a person of your word? When the lightning strikes, will you turn your back on your chosen one?
I for one will never do that.
2. Fearmongering
In my eyes, it is not a healthy thing to base my marriage on the assumption that there will be a divorce.
What if you divorce? What will happen then? Shouldn’t you be protected?
Not really. Not only am I fully against such mentality because of my first point of getting into a contract like this, but I’m also against it because such misguided fear of the statistical possibility of a divorce doesn’t do us any good.
It is my firm belief that people enter into relationships with false images of what it should be, will be, and what they want it to be. I have met only one person in my life that was completely upfront and honest about what he wanted and needed in his life, who had pondered over it properly and came to terms with his chosen path. If you didn’t guess yet, this person is my husband.
More than being prepared for the so-called ‘’inevitable’’, people should place more focus on being true to themselves, then picking a partner on their core principles instead of vain ones (including the whole Disney concept of true love, which I have grown to sneer at), before entering into a serious contract that binds both parties.
3. It’s a Team effort
The general opinion seems to be that codependency is a curse word. Why is this a thing?
As humans, we are integrally dependent on each other, one way or another. We depend on the shops and suppliers to bring us the things we need. We depend on our employer to pay us in time, so we can have a comfortable life, as does the employer depend on us to actually do our job. We depend on our country’s system to catch us when we fall.
Why is it so terribly bad to depend on the one you chose to share your life with?
It’s a brutal fact that none of us can make it on our own but with that comes the freedom of choice. Who are we going to make it with? Is it our boss, friends, even relatives? Or is it the one who truly chose you to be their partner in crime, and whom you chose, to go through the ups and downs of life?
We don’t tend to think about backup plans for most of the grievances in our lives, yet it seems fitting to place this kind of mistrust on our chosen one from the get-go. I, for one, want to base my marriage on the ideal of loyalty and team effort, rather than thinking that I need to be having my own back because my partner will eventually try to f*** me over.
4. The material doesn’t bring true happiness.
There are very few things in this world that have the ability to bring me joy, even fewer that manage to make me truly happy.
Finding a loyal husband, one who makes me proud to call myself his wife, is one of these few things.
Material, money, stuff. Clutter makes me anxious and nauseated as if I wasn’t already sick enough mentally. While I acknowledge that money is imperative for survival in the modern world, I refuse to let it rule over me. The same goes for stuff and things. I’ve even started to give out and toss things that I previously had clung to because they were filling an unfillable hole in my soul. A part of me grieves for the plushies and books, but I survived.
I ask myself the question: “What can I live without?”
The answer comes easily. Everything else I can get rid of but I can not live without Mr. Vana.
He brings me joy I never knew I had the ability to feel. My love for him brings me pain also. The thought of having to lose him… Are you seriously telling me that I should be thinking about this pre-emptively and making up plan B, and think about all the stuff I need to get should it happen, just in case? You are out of your gourd!
5. ‘’Whatever I accumulated, you were there.’’
This is something my husband told me, and people that told him to go with the prenup from what I hear. One powerful phrase that condenses everything perfectly for us and makes me tear up. I never before knew such a partnership.
As husband and wife, we have the power the enable or disable the other. Whatever fortune we will have, we will have amassed together. Both of us putting in the effort we could, with the skills and talents we have, to the best of our ability. Why on earth would I invalidate all of the things that my husband has done for us, for the sake of getting some material gain?
We live together, love together, share the pains and gains of the world together. We entered into this marriage knowing the responsibility in it. And, as far as we are concerned, we will see it through together, without the fear of divorce based on statistics from people that probably weren’t true to themselves anyway when they walked down the aisle.
My husband and I don’t have a prenup. What’s mines is his, what’s his is mine. That goes for what we have before we married and now. That’s how we are. It works for us!
That’s amazing, works for us too so far! I feel like people are so stuck in the mentality of ownership that they forget that the relationship is what matters.