Why We Never Get This Marriage Thing Right

“Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?” ― Esther Perel

Oh marriage. Our favorite institution to venture into blindly. Still to this day, I have yet to wrap my head around the fact that people give more thought to their “save the date” invitations than to the contract that they are about to sign that will change their life forever. Marriage isn’t the end of the road my friend, it’s just the beginning of a wild and bumpy ride. And if you don’t wear your helmet and your security belt, you are heading head first toward disaster.

Nietzsche said it, and I could not agree more with his words:If married people didn’t live together, there’d be way less divorces down the road Now before you get at me and bite my hand, here’s what I have to say about this. I get that when you decide to create a family, it’s kinda not super feasible to not live with your spouse and kidoos all in one house. I get it. But for all the other couples out there who are childless, I still can’t figure out why they choose to live together (if we take out of the equation the financial perspective.)

Why invite boredom, lack of novelty, familiarity, only to name a few - into your home when you can avoid it? We can’t complain that the desire isn’t like it once used to be or that dry spells become the norm. We set ourselves up for all this fuckery by not choosing to delay hedonic adaptation. At the end of the day, there’s no one to blame but our biased silly selves always thinking that we, somehow, will make it right.

We ought to embrace that there’s no such thing as an exception to the rule. It does not matter that you marry the hottest person on earth. The thrill of the new will always wear off no matter who you mate with. Maybe by understand better human nature and coming to terms with it, we could perhaps find ways to counter the downsides of our inherent fuckedupness.

Maybe instead of spending 87 hours picking our venue we ought to put this time making sure that we enter marriage with realistic expectations that match the ones of our partner. This isn’t fiction babe. This is reality - and one to take seriously as the stakes are high. Thinking that “love will triumph it all” or that “love will be enough” are bullshit myths that need to be shattered completely.

Love doesn’t sustain itself on its own. Bounds don’t get solidified just because you are wife and husband on a formal piece of paper. Leave your plants without water for months, and you’ll see them slowly dying. Leave your marriage unattended for months, and the connection between your spouse and yourself will slowly start to crumble.