Do They Want To Save This Marriage?
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011People who look back on the years, days or hours of their marriage and think it may have been a bad idea from the start often ask if what can be done to save this marriage? Maybe they should be asking if anything should be done.
Saving a marriage suggests it needs to be saved from something but from what? Is the marriage being threatened by outsiders making trouble? Is the marriage dying from lack of nurturing either emotional or financial? Is lack of novelty causing the partners to crave a new experience?
What people usually mean when they talk about saving a marriage is keeping it from ending in divorce. But why don’t they want it to end? Are they keeping their marriage alive or are they just creating a lingering death?
An interesting question to ask is what should this marriage be saved for? Do these people want to create a safe and happy home for themselves and the children they might have and perhaps extended family? Is their goal to give themselves the appearance of domestic bliss that their social circle will look upon jealously? Do they want someone with whom they don’t have to be on their best behavior and who will endure rudeness and even abuse? Couples would do well to ask themselves and each other what they accomplish by staying together.
A marriage might be one that is worth saving when two people realize that each contributes something to the relationship that adds to the quality of both of their lives.
A marriage worth saving is one in which the partners feel safe to make future plans, confident that in two three or ten years both partners will still be committed to each other if not to their original plans. Partners who are committed to each other can develop new plans agreeable to both as interests and situations change.
If partners discover that being part of this marriage has caused them to grow and become better in some way theirs could be a marriage worth holding on to. People who become wiser or more loving or more considerate of others or more willing to take calculated risks may find that they are in the kind of marriage that is worth working on.
Many murder mystery stories have plots that involve people marrying for money. Sometimes a young person is required to marry in order to inherit a fortune and sometimes a fortune hunter will marry an heir or heiress. Marrying for money and ignoring other questions of compatibility is not a good idea. That’s why these stories turn out to be murder mysteries.
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