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A Good Marriage Depends on You
By Ellen Kreidman, Ph.D.
The first years of my marriage were nearly perfect. My husband and I had two beautiful children and were very well off financially. So well off that I had live-in help and we traveled frequently all over the world. We were happily anticipating our third child when the bottom fell out of my idyllic life. My husband lost his job! Months went by with no job offers and none in sight, and our financial picture began to change. Finally, we faced bankruptcy, and if that wasn't enough to cope with, my husband's father died and my mother-in-law asked to come live with us.
I spent most of my pregnancy crying and feeling very sorry for myself. By the time my son was born, we had depleted our entire savings and had relocated to a small house. Eventually, my husband found another job, one that paid considerably less than what he had been making before, and my mother-in-law moved into a nearby apartment, but I remained angry and filled with self-pity.
Extremely depressed, I was on my way home from the supermarket one afternoon when I had an experience that was to change my view of life forever. As I gripped the steering wheel and sat waiting for a traffic light to change, I began sobbing and desperately asking over and over, "Is this all there is to life? Is this it?"
Suddenly, I became aware of a voice inside of me saying, "yes, Ellen. This is all there is. For things to change you have to change."
I was shocked that I had actually gotten an answer to my question! It was as if there was another presence within me.
Although I didn't understand it at the time, I had tapped into an inner source, a guide with me that would direct me wherever I needed to go if I would let it. Since that day, I have confirmed that we are all our own best therapists if we can just learn to listen to our instinct and do what we know we need to do. We have all the answers within us.
Marriage Doesn't Bring Happiness
All of a sudden it became very clear to me that my life and my happiness were my responsibility. My fulfillment was going to have to come from inside me, not from some outside source. Here is a phrase I have said many times since that day, "If it's to be, it's because of me."
It was at that stoplight that I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and to make some necessary changes. Once I came to grips with the fact that I was responsible for my life, I realized that my marriage was in jeopardy. Both my husband and I had been so busy feeling sorry for ourselves that we had failed even to consider the other person, much less put forth any effort toward communication or intimacy. It was clear that if my marriage was to survive, I had to put some thought, time, and effort into it.
In spite of all the other pressures on me, I chose to concentrate on my marriage, because I had invested too many years just to give up without a fight. I began to see my marriage as a separate entity. There was my husband, myself, and my marriage. The marriage required more effort than I had been giving it. I thought back to the time before we were married, remembering that there were many times when we were dating that one or the other of us was unhappy. We had family pressures, school pressures, social pressures, and money pressures, and yet our relationship worked.
A Marriage is like a Corporation
It worked because our relationship was separate from ourselves. A relationship, like a corporation, consists of a combination of personalities but has a life of its own. Just as a corporation requires dedication and concentration if it is to grow, so too does a relationship between two people. Perhaps I didn't feel like a walk on the beach, but the marriage requires a walk on the beach. Many times I don't feel like spending a weekend alone with my husband, but the marriage requires a weekend alone together. It's hard to find the time to call my husband just to let him know that I love him and am thinking about him, but the marriage requires that I make that call. Sometimes, making love is the furthest thing from our minds, but the touching and healing that comes from that union is what a marriage requires.
Everything we do in life requires time, effort and commitment. Why shouldn't our marriage get the same level of attention that our job or career does? We take continually try and improve our professional lives by taking educational classes. We hope in doing so we'll qualify for salary increases and promotions. Why not take classes for our personal lives so that we can improve that aspect of our life as well?
As I looked for ways to improve my marriage, I began to wonder why some couples stay together and others call it quits. Later that year, I began to research this subject seriously. During the course of my research, I interviewed hundreds of couples who had been married a minimum of ten years and as many as fifty-five years. What I found was that it's not what happens to us that determines the quality of our marriage. It's what we do about what happens that will determine the quality of our lives together. I found that most relationships experience similar problems. They all have their share of boredom, routine, financial problems, problems with children, problems with the relatives, and major life disappointments. The difference was that problems which might cause other relationships to fall apart brought these couples closer together.
I also found out that a good marriage doesn't depend on finding the right partner. It depends on being the right partner. A marriage requires that you try every day to be exactly the person that you would want to be married to.
If you would like to solve your marriage problems without marriage counseling, look no further because you have come to the right place.
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