Heed warning labels if you seek happy marriage
Here are the warning labels that come with the institution of marriage:
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU ATTEMPT TO ENTER MATRIMONIAL UNION
if you are convinced that no one who truly loves you and accepts you will or should ever ask you to change.
Marriage is designed to invite, provoke and sometimes demand change. Marriage is a huge petri dish built for human growth and development. Or, as author/therapist David Schnarch says, "Marriage is a People Growing Machine." Nobody should get anywhere near marriage who doesn't admire and desire a growing, changing life.
Are you madly in love? Engaged, or considering engagement? Let me guess: You tell yourself and your friends that he/she is perfect for you, right? Oh, you have no idea how perfect! This person who makes your heart go pitter-patter? He/she also is perfect to provoke your growth and development. Sooner or later you will discover the thing about your mate that exposes, provokes and agitates some part of you that is undeveloped, underdeveloped, immature, out of balance or unlovely.
How will your mate do this? Your mate will do this with his/her own undeveloped, immature and unlovely parts. Right now, your mate feels perfect for you. But, spend a couple of years unloading dishwashers, making babies and having the flu together, and you will find he/she is perfectly imperfect for you, too!
In short, if you like yourself just the way you are, then don't get married.
if what you value above all else is your individual, independent, autonomous self.
Yes, it's true that great marriages include -- demand -- the work of a having a healthy, separate self. But that doesn't mean independence is your highest value. Because marriage lives and breathes on the much more rigorous and much more rewarding work of learning interdependence. Trust. The risk of relying on someone. Needing them. Marriage asks us to spend the rest of our lives submitting a healthy, individual self in service to "the We."
In short, if you are what is most important, then don't get married.
... if you believe that marriage will provide you happiness.
In the very nature of marriage lives this paradox: There is no greater happiness for a spouse than a commitment to work toward the mate's well-being, and therefore the mate's happiness. To love someone is to revel in his/her happiness. To feel cocky and proud that you succeeded again in helping your mate feel loved and cherished. In great marriages, you awaken every day with some part of your brain hatching the next plan to be your mate's hero, encourager, advocate, empathic listener, muse, friend, helpmate, and in some cases, the one who provides a loving-but-candid kick in the keister when he/she has stopped paying attention. Sometimes this work is an inspired joy. Sometimes it's rigor and sacrifice. But, either way, that's marriage.
In short, if you think marriage owes you happiness, then don't get married.
... if you are really good at keeping score.
Rene Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." Astonishing the number of married people who say, in effect, "I resent, therefore I am." I know married folks who wouldn't recognize themselves unless they were nurturing resentment and articulating the next round of their mates' deserved contempt.
Hey, here's a news flash: Sometimes your mate will be ignorant, "small," imperfect, immature, selfish, insensitive, unjust, emotionally or actually dishonest. Married people invariably hurt and disappoint each other. Deal with it. And then get over it. Both resentment and forgiveness are fierce adhesives, but resentment is poison. It kills love. Eventually kills you, too. Every time.
In short, if your highest value is nurturing resentments, then don't get married.
... if you're deeply and literally convinced there is such a thing as "my own business."
Nope. Marriage means accepting there will never again be any such thing, strictly speaking, as "my own business." Everything you do, think and feel will in some way speak to the marriage. Help it or hurt it. Add to it or subtract from it.
Of course, spouses maintain respectful privacies. Of course, they will pursue some degree of separate interests and activities. But, in great marriages, even and especially when you are exercising healthy separateness and individual activities, you remain an ambassador for "the We." Your mate does in fact have a stake, a just claim on who you are, where you are, how you live, what you're doing, the friends you choose, and whether you get your butt to that doctor's appointment.
In short, if you begrudge -- in principle -- the demand for accountability, then don't get married.
And long as all that is understood, then, mazel tov!
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at skalas@reviewjournal.com.
