Success in marriage; till death parts you

People often admire a couple who are perceived to be succeeding in marriage. This is natural, everybody wants what they believe is good for themselves. What they don’t know is that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage or match made in heaven. What couples show you are the results, the struggles, sometime very excruciating are usually behind the scene. Marriage is not the climax of a relationship, raher, it is the beginning of a life long sometimes very bumpy journey. Therefore, the only successful marriage is the one that endures until death separates the couple.

Marriage is always a struggle, how can it not be? When two people who sometimes have very different backgrounds, orientations and mindsets are forced to cohabitate, of course there must be conflicts and disagreements. They will get on each other’s nerves and disagree on the simplest things, if this doesn’t happen, someone is pretending and it cannot be sustained over time. We must be reasonable and realistic in our expectations of our spouses. Our ability to manage our expectations juxtaposed with their own expectations of us makes it easy to deal with disappointments.

All humans come with baggages, we have character flaws which are “follow come” If we want to be fair and honest, we must identify and acknowledge our faults. Our ability to control the negative impact of these faults on people around us and the preparedness of our friends, family and especially spouses to accept and manage these negative traits is the difference between success and failure of our relationships. Knowing we are not perfect will help us accept the fault of others.

Your marriage may not be as bad as you think, it just requires some effort, patience, understanding and tolerance. The question is, are you ready to put in the work? It takes two to tango, while our spouse is expected to tolerate and endure, we should also manage our flaws and make conscious effort to minimize its impact on people around us, especially our partners or spouses who are close enough to bear the brunt of it. One way to do this is to always try not to give what you cannot take. Imbibing into your subconscious the saying “do unto others as you will have them do unto you” otherwise known as having a conscience.

To be happy in marriage requires a lot of work, understanding, sacrifice and tolerance. So whenever you see a couple appear happy together after many years of marriage, it is not that they do not have issues or have not endured very difficult phases in their marriage, it is rather a reflection of many years of endurance, tolerance and sacrifice by one or both of them. As long as your life and emotional wellbeing are not threatened, the struggle to make a marriage work continues. It can only be a successful marriage when you manage to stay happy together until death parts you, before then, you are continuously being tested – Sir Stanley Ekezie