Marriage - Six Ways You Can Guarantee Lasting Happiness
Most of us have a general idea of marriage as a relationship between two persons that have made a commitment to a caring, enduring partnership. The Devil is in the details, of course.
We usually start a marriage in a state of emotional excitement rather than in a cool, deliberative frame of mind. This makes it easy for people to overlook important differences in expectations that may sabotage lasting happiness.
Expectations about marriage are defined personally, socially, and religiously. Marriage between persons whose family or religious traditions are very different can lead to a wide disparity in expectations of spousal behavior.
1. Harmonize Expectations
Marriages go through phases that can put stress on both participants. The transition from the initial rapture of new love to the settled habits of living together is often the first test. People approach a spouse more seductively during courtship: we are on our "best behavior".
After the honeymoon, one starts to learn what one's spouse really expects in a husband or wife. That's when it can become apparent that the person we married is different from the person we were expecting. Similar family and religious traditions go a long way towards harmonizing expectations about spousal roles.
2. Aim For Role Equality At Home
Views of spousal roles have changed in popular culture. Older couples grew up in an era where the dad worked and mom stayed home. Such arrangements would be described as "complementary" in social role theory. The two spouses have roles that are not at all the same but which together provide a wholeness of function for the family. Modern marriages tend to be more symmetrical.
Often both spouses work outside the home, for example. Role equality in the workforce has inevitable consequences at home. If neither spouse is there to do housework during the day, it has to be done in the evening when both may be ready to relax after work. When a child gets ill and needs a parent at home, which spouse will drop work responsibilities to do the parenting? All these challenges add stress to modern living.
3. Skillfully Negotiate Transition From Courtship To Cohabitation
Many interesting dilemmas accompany parenting. A woman may face the emotional challenge of changing her status from pampered princess to a kind of indentured servant with a term of twenty years or more. A man may find that the girl who adored him now adores somebody else, while he is expected to sacrifice his natural interests in favor of his wife's emotional needs. A couple who has difficulty negotiating the transition from courtship to cohabitation may be especially challenged if children arrive before the relationship has had time to work out the early wrinkles.
4. Don't Let Your Children Divide And Conquer
Another kind of challenge arises as children become more rebellious in the transition to adulthood. Unresolved tension between the parents can readily be exploited by teenagers, who understand perfectly the uses of "divide and conquer".
5. Beware Of Middle-aged Stress
Middle-aged couples are subject to new kinds of stress. A woman who has always been somebody's daughter or somebody's wife or somebody's mother may decide she really hungers to be somebody. Hormonal and other maturational changes make her less willing to defer to a husband's assumption of authority. Meanwhile, the man may be moving up in his career and enjoying the rewards of success at work.
These include the admiring attention of younger women. Whether women like to hear this or not, men are biologically programmed to be attracted to women whose appearance suggests facility in childbearing, just as many women are strongly attracted to older, successful men.
A woman of fifty who is trying to be her own person may not seem like a very good deal for a man of the same age who regularly encounters admiring younger females at work. Increasing independence of children around this time may remove one of the main reasons the couple had for staying together.
6. Surmount Challenges Of Childrearing
If a marriage survives the challenges of childrearing and middle age, the couple can look forward to their "golden years", when retirement, illness, and disability may change their routines out of all recognition.
Marital dissolution after success negotiating earlier crises is probably not so common, however, because the couple now has so much history of mutual support. Contrariwise, marriages contracted in middle age may not have time to stabilize before changes of aging offer overwhelming challenges.
Social conservatism used to dictate that marriages were mainly contracted between persons of similar backgrounds with similar expectations, and that marital unhappiness was to be endured if it couldn't be cured.
Socially liberal trends have led to more diversity in the backgrounds and expectations of marital partners, and less stigma for divorce and remarriage. Given the stresses associated with modern family life, it's no wonder so many marriages fail to last.
Is marriage a dying institution? Should we care?
To read what the author's wife has to say about marriage
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Added: June 23, 2008
TR Knight latest to fight gay marriage ban - MSNBC
Brinkley Fails to Restrain Her Ex - E! Online
ABC News Brinkley Fails to Restrain Her Ex E! Online - ... preventing either side from publicly blabbing about their marriage by filing a request for a temporary restraining order against her former spouse. ... Brinkley Fires Back After Ex Breaks Silence Brinkley's ex takes his case to '20 20' Brinkley Upset About Ex's Candid Chat -Mormon Giving Against Gay Marriage In Calif. Tops $19 Million - On Top Magazine
On Top Magazine Mormon Giving Against Gay Marriage In Calif. Tops $19 Million On Top Magazine, OH - By Carlos Santoscoy Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) continue to donate money against gay marriage in California at ... Calif. marriage ban pulls ahead in polls