Is Marriage Really As Bad As Some Married People Seem To Think It is?

INTRODUCTION

The other day in the HubPages forums someone young asked the question, "Is Marriage Really That Bad?" He wrote about he has never really thought it was "a big deal", but how after talking to so many married people who have talked about how difficult marriage can be (I'm paraphrasing here) he's begun to feel as if marriage is "a big gamble", and he doesn't like the idea of gambling when it comes to this kind of decision. I started to reply in that forum thread, but when I realized I was (once again) coming up with an awfully long post, I decided I'd turn my reply into a Hub.

Some of what I write here won't entirely be understood by people who don't me and/or don't know details of how some things happened in my life, but I thought (just this time and when it comes to just this particular question) I'd write what I'd put down the thoughts I wanted and needed to write and not worry about whether some of the things behind those thoughts would be completely understood by any readers.

MY REPLY (AND REACTION) TO THAT PARTICULAR QUESTION

Everything in life is kind of a gamble. Most people don't like to run a life that way, but what people who are past a certain again (as opposed to being, say, under 35) often have learned is that all those things they were once so certain about turned out to have the occasional monkey-wrench thrown into them, sometimes by life, itself; and sometimes by another person or people.

If we could live our lives and plan them with the other person, without interference from life, I think it wouldn't be such a gamble. What we can't know, though, is what we, as a married couple, will face from the rest of the world and from life.

I'm divorced, and I was once talking to another woman who was divorced; and she said, "How, when we thought we were so sure it was right the first time; and when it turned out not to be; do we know if we meet someone else, we won't think it's right and end up discovering we were wrong again?"

I realized that before I got married my relationship was - like - 98% what seemed very, very, right; and about 2% what seemed "a little off" (and only a little). At the time, I figured it was "too much" to expect 100% perfection in a relationship. It's what I had grown up being told. It's what we often hear today. So, I overlooked those ever-so-slightly off things because they didn't seem important, and I was worried that my even paying attention to them would mean I was "expecting perfection" in someone else and in the relationship. Reasonable people know they, themselves, aren't perfect; so it's natural to understand that someone else (or a relationship) may "have a little thing here or there".

I grew up in a time when the big message was, "Things aren't perfect in any marriage. You have to be ready and willing to work at it." I'd even grown up in a time when people were making fun of anyone who believed there was such a thing as "true love". Scientists and cynics made it clear that what we think of as "romantic love" "is really" infatuation, and it's only when infatuation "grows into something more" that it turns into "real love" (the more comfortable kind, but also the less romantic and exciting kind).

Being a reasonable and sensible and practical person who "was above" a lot of "silliness", I believed all those other reasonable, sensible, and practical people who said we should marry our best friend, because marrying based on "romantic love" was pretty much marrying based on something guaranteed not to last.

That 98% of really, really, right aspects to the relationship seemed to me to be so much more than so many other couples seemed to have going for them. The trouble was that the 2% was made up little more than "seeds" that were hard to even see until a lot of big "life upheaval" (family illness, deaths, struggles, etc.) seemed to water those seeds and start them growing.

The stuff that made up that 98% of "right" was stuff that, on the surface, seems like the important things in compatibility and life. It was that practical "good match" kind of thinking that made it seem so right, but it was also that we were best friends. I've known other couples (and plenty of them) who didn't have all those right things going for them. On the other hand, those people have had the 2% that IS right and that DOES matter most in a relationship - the right kind of love between them, and that, I think (based on studying up analyses of romantic love) has to include equal respect and admiration (for the "overall human being" - not for one or another thing that person is good at) between the two people.

Overlooking that tiny 2% seemed pretty reasonable and sensible when it was "just microscopic seeds". It was only with hindsight, after those seeds had grown up and around us to the point where we'd both been driven to turn inward when the storms came, that I could see that what I'd overlooked had been a whole lot more important than it seemed at the time. Even with that, though, we could have survived as a couple had all those "life storms" not hit and brought out fundamental things about each of us that wouldn't have come out under calmer circumstances.

Today, I think I'd have an answer for that lady I was talking to; and I'd tell her, "I don't know about you, but I knew (way back at the beginning) there was something just a little not right about the relationship." It's not the kind of thing that unless you've shared it with someone you don't know what it is. It's the kind of thing that you know isn't there whether or not you've shared it with someone else.

As for that 98%, there was a whole lot of good in that marriage and relationship. There's still quite a bit of good in my relationship with my children's father. When we were going for the divorce, and a counselor asked what we fought about; my husband was quick to say, "We don't fight." That was true. We didn't fight. We got along. We liked each other, cared about each other, and so often had an "us-against-the-world" kind of thing.

I suppose I'd say that before (and even during) our marriage it seemed as if our relationship was a very nice (often beautiful) puzzle picture with a tiny piece missing. We all know what happens more easily to puzzles that have a piece missing in them.

In answer to your question (and what do I know, I suppose :/), I think there are no guarantees, but I think if you both feel as if that "puzzle picture" is absolutely complete and whole (without even the tiniest piece missing), it wouldn't be anywhere near the gamble it may seem to be.

I think the "work" in any marriage is supposed to be about things like living with someone who won't pick up his socks soon enough, or about "He likes a red car; she likes a green one, so there has to be compromise." Yes - there is "work" when it comes to those kinds of differences and even bigger things like life decisions.

I don't believe there should be work when it comes to what each person feels toward the other (that's what I'm talking about when I talk about "puzzle picture").

As someone who's divorced (and someone who has three grown kids and hopes each one of them realizes that just because some marriages - and lots of them - don't work that doesn't mean there's no such thing as "the right kind of love" and "the right kind of marriage". I believed all those people who implied that expecting "the right kind of love" and "real love" was expecting too much, because I was young and because the people who said those things were people one would think knew what they were talking about.

There are no guarantees you won't make mistakes in this life or that life (or even one spouse) won't throw that monkey-wrench in what seems right now. You'll survive monkey-wrenches if it's right, though; and you'll survive a mistake if it turns out things (or you) change. Besides, even if you're blinded by a 98% "so right" relationship as I was, if things go wrong you'll be left all that 98% that was so good and maybe even a 100% friend later on.

One reason I've been on these forums, posting up a storm over the last few days is that I'm taking a much needed "fooling around" break after finishing up preparations for my youngest child's (and daughter's) engagement party in a few days. You know what I did when her fiance IM'd me to tell me he was going to surprise her with an engagement ring and proposal? In a moment or terror and fear that the two of them may not know now what I didn't know "now" then either, I sent my daughter's future husband a link to one of my Hubs !!!! :/ :/ :rolleyes: :rolleyes: He must think I'm a crazy person!!! :lol: After all my kids and I went through because of divorce, I've spent a whole lot of time thinking about what would have helped me see and recognize the importance of that 2% I mentioned, and somewhere along the way I wrote a Hub based on what I think would have helped.

I don't want "my girl" to go through what I did, and so I thought that trying to share "some understanding" with her future husband may help prevent that. A day or so later I regretted the crazy, peculiar, and obnoxious thing I did (and one day I'll find a way to explain to him why I did it) (Maybe he'll end up finding this, that I’m writing now.)

In any case, I had to tell myself that I'm not the only one who became wiser after things happened as they did. My daughter is a different person from me, and her future husband is a different person from her father. Their relationship is different, and apparently - in spite of her family background - my daughter still not only believes in love, but is brave enough to decide to get married based that belief in it. There's a line from the song, "If I Could," and it is, "My yesterdays don't have to be your way." It's a good line. Nobody's yesterdays (or todays) have to be anyone else's "ways".

And, if it should one day turn out that my daughter's marriage takes the turn so many marriages do; well, she won't go through what I did when I left my marriage, because she'll have someone I didn't to make sure the same "horror show" doesn't happen to her: She'll have me and my faith in her to count on.

See - the thing is, when it became necessary for there to be a divorce between my children's father and me, I had four people who had faith in me and who knew me: Those four people were my precious sons, my precious daughter, and me. Well, they were children then, but their faith and trust in me was strong and clear and sure and solid; and as our world was turned upside down and yanked away from us, it felt, to me, as if the three of them and I were in a little ship on the stormiest and most dangerous of seas; and my job was to get us all (but especially those three children) safely to land.

So, I held their hands and fought off who and what needed to be fought off, and did what I could to keep us all whole; but, truth be told, it was their unwavering faith and trust in me that was my compass. It was also their faith and trust in me that gave me the sure footing I needed to keep standing, fighting, and making sure none of them were swept overboard.

At the time my daughter, the youngest of the three, was six years old (she turned seven in the middle of it all). The four of us learned things and saw things when we were going through that, and among those things was how to stay whole and strong when the world or the weather or the seas seem to do all they can to break people apart.

There's no doubt we were all left with a few scars from being knocked around on that "little ship" of ours; but, as that line in the song goes, my yesterdays don't have to be my daughter's (or sons') ways.

Is marriage "all that bad"? Not at all. Marriage can be (and often is) wonderful, even if imperfect and even, sometimes, if not destined to last forever. Marriages can be 100% wonderful, 98% wonderful or (from what I hear) 50% wonderful. Divorces, on the other hand - now divorces are, often enough, terrible.

I think, though, a whole lot of divorces could be prevented if some people in this world had more faith in other people in this world. If they can't be prevented I think that same faith and trust in some of those people we so love can go a long way in making them just a little less devastating. Perhaps equally important, having someone who has that unwavering faith and trust in you can make anything a whole lot better.

If you don't have that in a marriage I don't think your marriage is going to be what a marriage ought to be. If it turns out that things don't work out in a marriage, then having the unwavering trust and faith from someone close can make the difference between people and lives falling apart and those people and lives staying as whole as they've always been.

Most of the time (maybe not always) there's some element of a gamble when people decide to get married. Most of us have heard Kenny Rogers' song, "The Gambler"; and the line, "Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin' is knowin' what to throw away, and knowin' what to keep." There's a whole lot of things in relationships and in people that too often are thrown away (or forgotten) when someone should have known enough to keep them. There are also all kinds of things (beliefs, behaviors, emotional scars, etc. etc.) that people hang onto when they really ought to toss them out.

I have no doubt that too many people who don't know what they're talking about offer too much advice to people considering getting married.   Maybe I'm one of them.  Who knows?  I do know that you can't always listen to people who haven't had a good marriage, because sometimes they don't want to believe there is such a thing.  You can't always listen to people claiming to have a happy marriage either, because a lot of them don't.  They just think it's better than no marriage.  Even those in truly happy marriages, though, aren't always people you ought to listen to, because some of them are happy enough just by virtue of not having had their marriage tested more extremely, or more relentlessly, than others.  Also, there are people who are satisfied with being "mostly happy" as opposed to being truly happy.

When it comes down to it, maybe the only thing anyone can listen to is his own heart.  Sure, even hearts can make mistakes; but I think, as with so many other things, at least when we listen to our heart, if it turns out our heart made a mistake, at least those mistakes are our own.