Among my friends and acquaintance, there are so many couples divorced after their N years' passionate marriage. This pushed me to think about why and how a good marriage came down......
There are so many reasons and some background what make such things happen, however, I believe the key for keeping a marriage is to know the difference between love and marriage.
Love (I mean only love to person, and hereinafter) is a personal feelings. You may fall love into someone without any reason or sense. Love is after all love, while marriage is mostly responsibility legally, though there should be some love feelings in which sex is the core.
In terms of this point, it is the personality and the matched natures of a couple that can support them for a long time marriage. When the couple in a hard time or they are facing something inexpectant, they can work together to fix it. Then, here comes the point. Do you know your girlfriend/boyfriend deeply and fully before you decide to marry her/him? Do you think she/he suits you and can struggle together with you for a long life?
No one will say "No" when he/she is in crazy love before marriage. However, I have found so many happy couples fighting after a few or many years' marriage, and then marriage destroyed.
My husband was not my lover when we got married, but now he is my best friend and buddy. Surely he is my lovely hubby! Why? we knew each other when I was 4 and he was 5, when we moved in a same military courtyard and happened to be neighbors. We grew up in a same environment and had similar education, etc. In our long marriage, we had some quarrels, but no matters relating money. lol
I am not giving a lecture here on how to find a good spouse, but I want to share my big experience with young people on how two people who have had a similar background can create a long marriage.
I am looking forward to your comments and we can have a discussion
Well, i've read your story (though it's just brief here) and I am really admire you that you've got a very happy family. Congratulations Lisa!
My love history is complicated, sometimes I really felt being badly hurt when someone who once loved you so much, betrayed you in one day. Maybe I was doing wrong, but such kind of punishment was not supposed to be there for me. What's more, the girls in 80s and 90s are too complicated and you never know what they are think about, and, the worse, even themselves don't know what is the real thing they want.
And, as you mentioned, marriage means responsibilities, you are not lovers but a family. So the important thing is, the definition of "love" and "family".
Frankly speaking, I don't like many features from our traditional family, but sometimes I was wrong. When my mother passed away, I started to think about family again. It's a place where you can return when you are in a situation full of despair.
Anyway, the best result is, be in love, and be married.
as a girl in 80s, i have to say, i did lose. Even at the moment, i still a little confusing about my future. However, it is a journey to grow. I did hurt somebody too. I regret, a lot! If god gives me another choose, i will never start the stories.
Back to the "family" issue, the family is always the place protecting you no matter what happens.
Since after all, we are all alone in the forest, we need a family there telling us there is always somebody supporting us.
To many people,
Family is a port, where they can moor the small boats and protect them from waves.
Family is a garden where they can enjoy the flowers and have fresh air freely.
..................
However, family can be even a battlefield or dustbin, where you can not even breathe! So, we need to pay more attention to set a good family and to maintain it very often.
As we all know, there is popular saying like this:"Marriage is grave of love".many people believe it.I have no right to say something about it .coz i am still single.but I will share one new saying which is from one of my friends who has been married more than 10years.
once when we talked about this topic,she said when she became bride,she knew few things how to manage and maintain marriage.As time passed by, she understands marriage is not grave of love,it is garden of love.it is not the end but the begining.
If marriage is a box,we usually thought that,when we married,the box is full.others supposed to do this n that for us,we are ready enough to face any problems n difficulties in our marriage.
It is wrong way of thinking n selfish state of mind.Actually, when we married,the box is empty,we need spare no effort to add more things to this box in the rest of our lives.It is a learning course.It is a new journey.On the way of our journey,we should be more patient,initiative and positive,we should keep our oath deep in our mind.
Now she lives happily with his lovely hubby n 12years old beautiful daughter.
Marriage is just a contract. In the current legal system in China, the contract is pre-defined, and you got to accept it as a whole. You can't change any part of it. You can't marriage with a customized underlying contract. That's all.
to make everything customized is a dream for me.
You are right that in some point of view, we can regards marriage as a contract!
However, the two partners in family contract must be more close and richer of sensibility! lol
To people who have a happy marriage, I just want to say ADMIRE.
To me, it's a really complicated thing. (so complicated that I sometimes think I'd never know)
You said LOVE is a personal FEELING, and I think so is HAPPY. A personal feeling can not be imitate or copy. Even if you're doing exactly the same as the happy people you admire, you may still be unhappy.
So I'm just not sure about when here comes a unhappy feeling in your love or your marriage, is it the marriage or love to be CHANGED, or your attitude to them to be CHANGED? ...Or it depends?
aw, I am so moved by your comments and I can also fully understand you, though I am one of those women who are 50s...
When I got married at the age of 28 (It was quite late for me to marry at that time and on that standard), I didn't know what marriage meant. I didn't want to marry anyone since I could not marry my lover(why? it is another long stroy. lol). However, I chose my current husband without any sensibility but full sense. But I even refused to live with him for half a year after we got marriage registered. This marriage was just like a contract between me and hubby at that moment. And I also regarded it as a promise to mom and family, as well as to the whole society, since I didn't want to antagonize the whole.
Anyway, real life changed my mind little by little, I was moved by hubby's good personality and his mild nature...... So, I have got this idea that Lover may not exactly become your spouse, but your spouse should be your best friend finally.
Your story must be very interesting. Actually, as for as I know, my mom also had a lover but they just cannot be married, due to the "Chu Shen Wen Ti" , that means, if you have a different family-background, and this background is not accepted by the gov-er-nment, your marriage will be very complicated and you always have to give up at the end. I am sure you know this very well for you are 50s woman :)
Anyway, my mom's final marriage with my dad, as well as your marriage, is a very good and happy marriage. That's much more important than anything else.
Fishrine,
There is another big issue you raised in your comments. That is what happiness is and how it comes.
Happiness is a kind of individual mood and sensibility, neither any material you can find out in your laboratory, nor anything you can create by some regulation or formula. However, you can adjust your mood, change your idea on life or relationship with others, reduce what you want or simply to have a good rest, and then to find as well as to feel happiness. I did this way when there happened unhappy things.
However, I know that is easy to say but hard to do. I tried, and I am going on to do for holding on my happiness!
Thanks a lot, lisa. I'll keep trying to adjust myself.... as well as working hard in the laboratory:p
Well, talking about love, I have to say during the last year, I experienced a lot, suffered a lot and what 's more learnt a lot.
Actually, for the right moment,right now, I have a similar opinion to lisa, the point is that the one we married or will marry to might not be the very person we fall in love with that deeply.
I loved a boy, who is fantastic, amazing and really wonderful boy. We had a kind of relationship for several months. For some reasons, we broke up at last. Not body did anything wrong, we just do not fit. I hardly felt being hurt the day we broke up, cause i know, for the different dream we are pursuing, for the differnt feeling in our hearts, the relationship gose no where.
No doubt, I still love him, but in a quiet different way. I choose to keep the feeling hiding in the deep corner of my heart and view it as a cherish memory which can rise a smile on my face.
For the further, for me, I think i am just going on the searching, waiting for somebody, who might not attract me that ,that ,that much (but he must attract me), who might have a character compatible to me, who love me a little bit more than i love him(:P) , who can be my friend and teacher and last but not least who i can have a ordinary, peaceful life with.
okay, you are a big girl, or a woman now, hahaha -_-
But as for me, I will never marry a girl who's not attracting me.
This is a really interesting post.
Prior to my current relationship, I was in a 5 year relationship (from the age of 17 to 22). To this day, I still cannot really pin-point the exact reason why we broke up. In fact, on the surface, we were very much a happy couple. To answer Lisa's question in her post, I would say my ex and I knew each other extremely well but began to become complacent over time. But I guess relationships are complex beasts and sometimes things do not always work out as planned.
I think as a whole, relationships (whether it be a marriage or de facto or otherwise) are greatly influenced by specific points in time in a person's life. As Angel said with her experiences, she knew her ex and her had differing goals and life paths. The important thing to remember is that people change over the years. A person you knew 5 years ago can gradually become a stranger. If a couple cannot adapt and change in harmony over the life of their relationship, it will ultimately lead to separation.
Hi, Lisa
I should congratulate you for your steady marriage life! Definitely!
For a 80s-born like me, I've been suffered once in love and I was totally in struggle then.
I did couple conflict research and report last month for my communication theory class, but for sure, it's just theoretical. :)
I have no idea about my future love or possible marriage. I don't care that much now. I gotta be influenced by feminism movement, haha. I want to sleep in my career and hobbies until someday my Mr. Right wake me up.
To be loved and to love are both not that easy. :)
And by the way, I come here following a link in facebook... Nice place and nice authors here.
Thanks, anyway, ifgogo is still a very small, lovely blog. But i believe it's very interesting and full of happiness.
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