Second Thoughts: Doubts before Marriage

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.-- Samuel Butler

So if you really love me, Say yes.
But if you don't, dear, confess.

Marriage is an huge step in life. Before my first marriage, I had many doubts, I had a feeling this might not worked. However I have made a promise to my boy friend, so I went along and get married. And guess what? I am divorced now. What is more interesting is, all my friends have divorced or about to getting a divorce, or wants to but afraid of getting a divorce. I have witnessed all these marriages and relationships from start to end. Then I started to wonder, would it make any change to talk about doubts? What is wrong with doubts and worries? Many people have doubts before getting married, there is the wedding anxiety, fear of commitment and so on. Yet, people get married and some of them really be happily ever after. (Few but it happens)

Did these happy couples have doubts before marriage? I guess yes. what about divorced couples. Hell, yes. So what difference does it make? Which feelings are just anxiety, which feelings of doubt can be the sign of a more important thing. That is the question.

Only the people who are getting married can know the difference between the anxiety or the real doubts. There are ways to help them figure it out.

Marriage Pressure

You have to remind your friend, and yourself, you have to take care of the pressure. Maybe every single person around you wants you to get married. Maybe you are getting older and worried about living single. Maybe it is your parents or in-laws or relatives. You feel the pressure. You feel you are giving up. "I will do what ever you tell me please just take away the pressure!!!"

This is dangerous. The best way to help yourself is to remove this pressure from your life and try to understand what you really want. Go for a vacation alone. Mediate. Try yoga. Talk to friend who are not obsessed about marriage, who do not care that much. Go someplace where you can be alone, with yourself. Imagine you are going to die in a year. Would you still wanted to be married to this person? If you are going to die in ten years?

If you have poor stress management techniques, it is possible that you make bad decisions under stress. It is an important decision to be taken seriously. If it is your parents, image you are living alone. Imagine they don't exist. Would you still marry?

If the answer is no, just walk away.

Is is marriage or relationship?

Are you in love? Do you want the person next to you to be with you? Maybe he is a great guy, and he asked the question with a beautiful stone. You said yes. Now you can not stop worrying and love the ring. Well. Maybe you might consider taking things slow. You can plan a long engagement to be sure. Engagement is a stressful event, with lots of quarrels, his family, your family, lots of conflicts, differences. If you do not want to commit yourself, there may be two options. Either you have commitment issues. Or simply, you do not love this guy enough.

If you think you have commitment issues, make some thought experiments. What if he was this person, what if it was your high school sweetheart? What if he was the guy you always adored but did not have courage to ask him out? Would these conditions make any difference? So try to imagine, do you have commitment problems in general? In what conditions you would say, this is it, and I am going to die if I don't marry this person! If you can think about conditions, you can say, it is not about you. It is your feelings towards this person. It is not the marriage. There are deeper implications.


I will continue tomorrow...

(I am getting married very soon. I think at last I know the difference between anxiety of marriage, the wedding and ceremony and not wanting to get married. In this second round, I had though times but whenever I look at my man, I see us growing old with children, and have an amazing life together, to sleep with him every night....)

Where does romantic love come from?

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.

-- Lynda Barry

So you are in love.

I was madly in love and did not know what to do about it. My life was a mess at the time. I was so unhappy beforehand. After falling in love, I was desperately unhappy and miraculously happy at the same time. Then I knew I had to take action. But I did not know what to do. My life was complicated at that time. I wanted to rationalize what I have been going through.

During my research I figured, it is really all about your family and your childhood traumas. You are wounded somehow, you want to fix it. Understand it by re-staging the conditions to resolve this time. So you choose people for your wounds. If it is a parent, you choose a partner who you can transform into this parent you have issues with. A little familiarity is enough. In every relationship we are not in our own personalities. We act a differently. Our partner demands it so without noticing.

Romantic love is all about shadows. Shadows of two people talk to each other in their own way. What you cannot face, what you cannot cope you put it in your shadow. The good thing is they don’t stay there long, and romantic love is a great way of facing yourself. Real love transforms you and your partner into something new and stronger.

What makes love?

Three things. Intimacy, passion, commitment.

Intimacy is sharing. Showing oneself your true self with all the good things and the bad things. Showing your true face, the one you cannot look alone. You have to share. You cannot hide. If you hide, if you are afraid, you wont have intimacy.

Commitment is saying this is the person I am with. After the commitment, once two people know they will be there for each other no matter what happens, it creates a strong bond. Without commitment the couple cannot feel the trust and intimacy gets wounded.

Passion is the hardest part of the triangle. It is between two bodies, it is between souls. It is a gift. It is a miracle. I don’t know how to achieve it, however I know when two people really connect in a deep level and do not fear their shadows, it can happen.