The Marriage Trap

Okay, our society sells us on an image of marriage. As children, it is assumed that we will get married and have children. As young adults, friends and family pressure, "hey, when are you going to settle down." Women in their late twenties start to panic if they are not hitched yet. We are sold a glamorous, glossy, magazine type image of marital bliss. Boy are we duped or what! The reality is that we are told to get married, but not advised on how to marry the correct person. When I was in my 20's, everyone just married whomever they were dating at that time. None of my friends including myself ever stopped to ask, hey, do we have what it takes to last! Anyone can get married, it takes a lot more than that to stay married. I wish there had been an Adult Ed class called "marry for the right reasons." Do people really marry for love? My own mother certainly could not advise me on the subject, nor can many parents. Many parents are in their own marital hell. How many aging parents actually seem happy in their own marriages? Not to say that there are not some happy marriages, but they are the exception not the rule. I have observed many late 50's to 60's marriages who seem anything but happy. They are sarcastic to one another, grumpy, tired and appear as if they survived the war. I've counseled some of them and sure they raised their kids, but still question why they stayed together. Heck for that matter, I recently looked around the school at my son's open house and most of the couple's I observed in their 30's and 40's looked pretty miserable too. One woman I counseled in her 50's came to me after she started cheating on her husband. She was extremely anxious about cheating on her spouse, yet she admitted that she felt happier than she had been in years! The interesting turn of events was that she soon discovered she had breast cancer. She died within a year but said to me she never regretted the affair. Instead, she regretted not leaving her spouse years ago. Not that I advocate cheating, but why are so many people trapped in unhappy marriages? We've come a long way since the era of a Jane Austin novel, haven't we? Maybe not. People still seem to feel trapped by societal pressure, finances and familial or religious expectations. Today in a counseling session, I asked a male client of mine "what is good about your marriage?" His first response, "we have a really nice house!" Wow! He mentioned that first, even before his kids. So there it is...... Are people staying together because they have nice houses? What I have observed and learned is that often people marry the wrong person at the right time. From a lesson perspective, there is never really a mistake. The wrong person can teach you much about yourself. Often the wrong person helps to mirror back to you your fears and insecurities. You have to go back and question, why did I marry that person. It makes you face much about your insecurities to evaluate whether you worried about your families approval, peer pressure, family history of enabling and denial, religious beliefs and more. How can you discover the right path unless you've followed the wrong path first. There is a lesson in every path we take and there are truly no wrong turns. The question becomes, have you sorted through why you've made the choices you have and what have you learned? With awareness and healing the next step becomes the wrong person becomes the right one after all, or the marriage splits to help each individual grow in separate directions. There is no right answer and often a lot of pain and soul searching involved. I observe so many people running from the tough questions they have to face about their lives and marriages. Instead they engage in escape tactics such as affairs, being workaholics, alcohol and many more unhealthy behaviors. As the saying goes, those things are symptoms, what are you really running from and afraid to face? I choose soul searching. Much better to discover who you are and what direction to head than to bury your head in the sand. I am not sure where the search will lead...... but with love in my heart, it will be an interesting journey nonetheless.