As I keep discovering more about the destruction of the traditional family unit and the recline in marriages, as well as the divorce rates, I can’t help but wonder if people are doing it for entirely wrong reasons. Here are some of the things I and my husband have been talking about in regards to who, and when, to marry.
#1 Do you know yourself?
Being the core to everything we do in life, knowing ourselves, means that the choice to marry shouldn’t be anything less than a great inspection of yourself and what you need. What makes you happy? What do you absolutely need in your life? I’m talking the heavy, enlightenment level stuff, not vain concerns such as the hair looking good or the car we drive. Actual, tangible things that give the comfort when the time has come to move on, the things that give us permission to honestly say we regretted nothing.
Before even thinking about getting into serious commitments and contracts, such as marriage, you need to know your set of values and where you want your life to be heading. Nothing less and you’ll find yourself in the chaos that will spin out of your control. You’ll find yourself in places you don’t feel at home in, and in actions that may even go against your core morals and beliefs.
A part of this immense self-searching journey is to find your boundaries. The things that you will always say no to. Things that I, as a borderline, have a hard time paying attention to, and in the past, this inability to recognize the things I can’t have and don’t want in my life led me into a world of hurt. Don’t do that to yourself, get to know who you truly are, and then start finding a partner for life.
#2 Are you delusional?
None of us want to think of ourselves as delusional, but let’s face it, a lot of the time we are. We have been indoctrinated by all sorts of movements and images we see every day on how life should be – marriage isn’t an exception. So. Are you a realist, or do you still think that life will be just happily ever after when you find the mythical one? Do you believe in hard work and improvement, rather than expecting the first rush of love to carry you through decades of mistakes and pain?
While it’s easier to keep looking outward and wondering about the other people’s mistakes and how they are not doing the right things to fix them, can you honestly say you are doing your best either? Do you have your shit together enough, so you can be certain you will be able to bring things other than the baggage from the past into another person’s life? I got lucky with my husband, he accepted me with my baggage and all. But not for a second do I think that it is a reason to stay where I was when we met. Get your shit together, And find someone who has done the same, or is at least on the path to getting there.
#3 Can you accept them?
In line with my previous point, you need to seriously think about why it is that you are with someone. Is it because they are amazing as they are and bring you everything you need, or are you perhaps hoping that one day, with enough blood and tears, they will morph into the perfect partner? Please, for the love of God, don’t play the game of life with people thinking you can change them, or that it’s even in your hands to do that.
Change is something every individual has to decide to do on their own. This is very much prevalent in ones like me with mental health issues, as we can’t even begin the process of healing unless we give our full consent and support to it. You need to ask yourself: “Can I spend the rest of my life with this person if they stay the same from now to eternity?”
Your job is not to ‘grow’ a husband or a wife, your job is to determine whether a person would be a good match for you from the get-go. Do they have the same values? Do you want the same things from life, everyday life included? Do they attract you? It is never a good idea to commit to anything unless you can know for sure that you can ride that commitment through the maelstrom and return intact, if not stronger for it.
#4 Are you willing?
I find that people tend to be under this weird presumption that love conquers all. Well, true love does, and true love has nothing to do with the wild imaginative stories people keep telling themselves of how things should go. There is no happily ever after, folks, tragedy will keep hitting us in ways that are impossible to predict.
A part of this life and the tragedy for some people seems to be the fact that compromise is a key element of life. You need to be willing to give a little to get a little. Where did this extremely naive thought sprout into people’s heads from, that you should never compromise anything? The cry for freedom has gotten so much overboard that people don’t seem to understand we are all in the same prison of life, albeit we do have a little bit of a say on who our jailor is.
The willingness to accept that we can’t, and quite frankly shouldn’t have everything we want, makes the world a little bit more tolerable to live in. We need to understand which are the things we should try to control and protect, and which things we should let go and compromise in. In marriages, this desire to not compromise comes to the light in many ways, one of which I’ve found to be the woke woman’s overly defensive attitude towards her body. I feel terrible for all the husbands that are being deprived of their needs of intimacy and sex, only because their wives are not willing to even talk about compromise.
#5 Do you want privacy?
We had a chat, me and my husband, about privacy and how even the word itself brings forth a wave of sorrow. No matter how we tried to spin it, privacy always ended in secrecy, which ended in defensive behavior, even lies. Privacy always entails that you have something which you do not wish to share with another person. So my question is, why would you want to keep parts of yourself from your husband/wife?
I took part in a discussion on Twitter about it once, and I was baffled how immediately defensive people are of their possessions, phones in particular. One lady seemed to think that just because she was checking hotels to surprise her husband for his birthday, he would think she was cheating on him. When did it come to this? Why would that be the first thing on his mind? And surely, if you were planning a surprise you could always tell them: ‘’Hey, please don’t spoil the surpriza!” We are adults, we know what is going on. The surprise will stay a surprise, even if we tell the loved one not to spoil it. I mean, they still don’t know what it is. Or maybe I just have an exceptionally smart husband to pick up on these things.
The need for privacy has ruined a lot of good things for people, and we here at the Vana household came to the conclusion that not having any accomplishes exactly what people wanted from privacy, to begin with. We have no hidden corners in the closets, so we don’t need to go looking for them. Our phones are ours, not separated by the fear of our illusion of privacy being broken, and so, we don’t have the need to go through each other’s devices. You should try it, living without having to worry about my husband grabbing my phone gives a true sense of freedom. It allows me to focus on more important things, such as loving him, instead of keeping secrets from him and avoiding him while also getting ready to unleash the beast should he ever dare to touch my stuff.
Marriage is a contract
You need to take it as seriously as you do any commitment. You wouldn’t choose a job based on the looks of it or without checking and finding out if it is a good fit before committing yourself to sit there, day by day, for years to come. You wouldn’t buy a house without doing the proper inspections, sometimes even hiring a professional to do them, and without being absolutely sure that whatever that house throws at you, you will be able to handle it. Why would you do that with a life partner?
Get yourself straight on who you are and what you want, make sure you are not having unrealistic thoughts about the brutality of it, and make your peace with the person you chose to be by your side, their needs and wants together with your own. And drop those barriers, choose to truly trust, we don’t need privacy to be happy. We might need space sometimes, and that you should ask for when the time comes, but drop the belief of needing things to hide, to keep yours. You are entering a lifelong contract, and if you did your groundwork properly, you should have no reason to fear or keep secrets! You can have your true happy ending.
Did you choose the right partner? Let us know in the comments!
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