It seems to us that everything should be easy in harmonious relationships. Partners are required to understand each other perfectly and to match in tastes and views. The result of such romantic ideas about love is parting. What other misconceptions can cause a breakup and what is important for a happy marriage?
Marriage by mistake is one of the worst things that can happen, and we try our best to avoid it. But we still do it for different reasons. One of them is the fear of being misunderstood when trying to get close to someone.
After all, we seem normal only to those who do not know us very well. In a wiser, more conscious society than ours, a typical question on a first date would be, “So how crazy are you?”
Perhaps you have a hidden predisposition to anger and are like Vesuvius every time someone disagrees with you. Perhaps you are too constrained in intimate relationships or it is difficult for you to remain silent in response to humiliation. Nobody’s perfect. The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our problems and complexes. Whenever shortcomings are exposed, we blame the partner for this.
But what about friends, you ask, they will tell you if something is wrong. But they are not at all obliged to do the hard work, enlighten us and open our eyes to ourselves or our partners. Often they are simply afraid to offend and do not tell the truth.
Of course, our partners are no better than us in this sense. They also have a lot of flaws that they hide or that they don’t even know about. Naturally, when we get to know each other, we try to get to know each other, to understand what kind of person he is and how he lives. We get to know our parents, look at photos in family albums, meet their friends from the university. All this creates the feeling of doing homework at school, but no.
In fact, we don’t know much. And marriage becomes a gamble in which both partners bet all their chips and believe that everything will be fine. At the same time, they do not even fully know who they are, who their partner is and who they could become.
The more hasty your marriage, the safer partners feel
Previously, people married for various reasons: plots of land border, the groom’s family has a thriving business or family palace, the father of the bride is a city judge, the parents of the young revere the same interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. In such marriages, loneliness, betrayal, violence were natural, and screams and crying were often heard through the closed door.
Today we marry for love. The main thing in marriage is that both of them know deep down that this step is the right one. They also feel an insane mutual attraction. However, the more hasty your marriage is, the more secure the partners feel. Recklessness and haste psychologically justify all mistakes.
The importance of mutual attraction is a consequence of centuries of restrictions. We consider ourselves seekers of happiness, but it’s not that simple. What we are really looking for is contact with another person who can make changes in our plans to become happy.
We are again mistaken when we strive to reproduce in our adult relationships the feelings that were close and understandable to us in childhood. Love in childhood, we most often expressed in destructive emotions. Jealousy towards parents. Tears and fear when we were left alone. The desire to help an adult who has lost his temper. Lack of parental support. Fear of your own anger.
And we reject some candidates not because they are bad, but because they are too correct, too balanced, mature, understanding and reliable. Such in our hearts do not find a response. We associate life with the wrong ones, because “being loved” for us does not always mean “being happy.”
Another reason we make mistakes is loneliness. No one can adequately choose a partner if living alone is so unbearable. To be selective, you need to be comfortable with the prospect of loneliness. Otherwise, we run the risk of clinging to the first comer and dooming ourselves to an unhappy marriage.
Often we get married to create a pleasant feeling of permanence and stability. We think that marriage will help us preserve the joy and emotions of the first days: boat trips along the Venice Canal, sea spray in the face, conversations about the most intimate and the anticipation of dinner with risotto and a glass of wine.
You got married to make these feelings permanent. But they did not understand that there was nothing in common between feelings during the first date and marriage.
What is happening in reality? Marriage takes us to another level, where a lot of responsibility, a mortgage loan, routine and children that kill the passion that gave birth to them are mixed in. The only important ingredient here is your partner.
Is there a way out? The good news is that none of this matters if we simply accept that no “our” person exists. You don’t need to get divorced just because you think that somewhere there is a perfect being who will satisfy all your needs and desires for free.
But it is necessary to abandon romantic ideas and realize: all people break down and get angry, they can annoy us and sometimes disappoint us. And we will, without any malice, do the same towards them.
The feeling of imperfection will never go away. But none of this is grounds for divorce. Choosing a life partner, we cannot predict what will be the pound of salt that we have to eat on the way to a harmonious marriage.
The ideal partner is not the one who shares all our tastes, but the one who can negotiate with us and come to a compromise
This philosophy of “pessimism” will allow you to cope with many disappointments and relieve anxiety “what if this is not my man?”. Don’t look for perfect, look for not-so-bad. It may seem strange, but such pessimism relieves the undue pressure that marriage is subjected to in our romantic culture.
If a partner could not save us from loneliness, this is not an argument against him and not an argument in favor of breaking up the relationship.
The ideal partner is not the one who shares all our tastes (there are none), but the one who can negotiate with us and come to a compromise. Such people should be looked for. Do not follow the fabulous idea of perfect complementarity.
The ability to easily resolve disagreements is the marker of a “not-so-bad” person. Compatibility is the achievement of your relationship, its outcome. And it does not necessarily have to be a prerequisite for them.
Romanticism is useless to us. This is an evil and cruel philosophy. It makes a lot of things about marriage seem shocking and terrible to us. Because of him, we decide that everything is not as rosy as in the movies, and our union with its imperfections and roughness is a mistake, it must be broken.
So isn’t it better to be prepared in advance for the “wrong”, “wrong” person with flaws and a love of pop music, and not your favorite rock? Then you can look at problems easier – with humor and in a kind way. And you will not care at all that your marriage is “not perfect”.
Author: Alain de Botton is a writer, philosopher, author of books and essays about love, founder of the School of Life, which promotes a new view of education on the principle of the philosophy of the schools of Ancient Greece.