Have you
ever felt that your spouse is not the one you wished for? Don’t get me wrong
but it’s normal to think that what we expect from our spouses is never getting fulfilled
or the percentage is very low. The majority
of the couples, who fought for getting married, eventually find themselves
disappointed with marriage. And if you ask any honest married person to
estimate the number of those that find themselves disappointed with matrimony,
this will be closer to 100%. That’s because no matter how compatible our
spouse is or how prepared we feel for our wedding, it is natural to experience
a discrepancy between what we hoped marriage would be and what it actually
is. But why expectations are too high? Why we feel disappointed?
Over the
years the relationship between a husband and a wife has been stretched
so much. Which means they have started expecting way higher than it can be
executed. Hopes from marriages in the time of my mother or grandmother was not
like what we have today. Those days people had different people for different
needs. They used to talk and share appropriate things to suitable people
(parents, sisters, brothers and other family members). Now we want all our
needs met by one person, our spouse. Apparently,
we are turning too inward towards our families. And as a result,
friendships and other relationships are losing importance and being neglected,
and people are looking to their spouses to fulfill all their social needs. In past, there used to be very
limited notions for spouses. But now we expect our spouses to be a lover, friend, confidant, disciple, bread
earner and even an adventure game partner. This kind of pressure to be
“everything” for our spouse has become a burden with time. And this might not
be the best way to cultivate a healthy, lasting, fulfilling relationship.
Also, we are
people of an era which believes in bullet
trains and smart devices. We want everything super fast and always up to the
mark. We wish our spouses to understand us, our family and our innersole so
agile that we never care if our second half
is losing breath. Every person is different and the family in which he/she
belongs is obviously unique. We want our partners to get adjusted into other’s
family and that too without any hitch. We are humans,
not a machine part which can be seamlessly tuned.
It actually takes a good decade of giving yourself to another person to obtain
the true benefits of oneness. And we want our better half to understand
us in just one or two years. Not good.
Love is not a
day to celebrate every year on anniversaries. It’s a beautiful journey
of daily choices to give ourselves to another person. True love is
all those maddening daily irritations that we generously and graciously ignore. Ways to earn love
from other and getting our expectations fulfilled are intentional sacrifices and selflessness.
If we want to stay happily married, we need to give time and ease to our
second half to understand us. We also should look outside of our nest for some of
our expectations. We are not married to a superhero
or a cat woman. He/she can’t be everywhere and can't be right always. True love is accepting our partners
even if they are wrong. And a successful marriage needs less expectations and lots of true love.
Comments
Post a Comment