You’d think the last person you’d take marriage advice from is a divorce attorney. I have been surprised what you can learn about marriage by getting people divorced. It’s sort of the study of what doesn’t work. So, here are some lessons from marriages past.
- Ladies, whatever you did to get your man, keep it up. I know it is exhausting. If we still lived in Eden, we’d be able to just let ourselves go in the comfort of our nuptials. However, we screwed that up with the whole apple thing. So, we have to keep working at it. Men are very visual creatures. You can’t have crusty feet and keep a man.
- Be vulnerable, be nice and use words. People create lives where they do things they don’t want to do “for their spouse” and then expect something from their spouse in return. They don’t ever tell their spouse what it is they expect in return and then they become resentful that they don’t get it. I hear it all the time, “I’ve done X for 20 years and she never once repaid me with Y.” Stop keeping score. Whatever hurts you, say it. Whatever you would like from your spouse, ask for it. I think you’d probably be surprised by how smoothly things can work when you ask nicely. But, often by the time people realize this, they are too far gone. It’s really hard to work through years of resentment and it can be prevented by simple language skills.
- Stay in the marriage and out of your comfort zone. Often when you married your spouse, you were on the upswing. You had dreams for your life. You were alive with the excitement of possibility. Your marriage is not the pinnacle. It is not the place where you should quit dreaming, only to coast down the other side. It is the place where you pick up a partner and keep climbing together. I see many people who get married, get sucked into the vortex of coupledom and lose themselves. They lose their dreams. They lose their desire, their passion for life. They then depend on the marriage to be their dream, their all, their happiness. These are the people I see who come alive again after a divorce. They are hurt, angry and resentful little caterpillars when I meet them and beautiful butterflies when they leave me. The thing is if they’d never gone into that cocoon of comfort, they probably could’ve saved their marriage. They got comfortable. Life begins at the end of our comfort zones – so do our marriages.
- Whatever it is you’re “missing” in your spouse has more to do with you than your spouse. When I listen to an hour of complaining about how crazy, ridiculous, hurtful their spouse is, I know immediately the person sitting before me has some work to do. No matter how “normal”, stable or competent the person seems to be, when the layers are peeled back, I always find the snakes lurking just below the surface. This one, I learned the hard way – from experience. So, if you find yourself in a marriage and you really dislike a trait of your spouse, the first step is not to lash out. The first step is to view that as an indicator of some work that you need to do. Then you begin tracing that feeling back and find the root. You’ll realize it was never about your spouse. It was always about you.
- We will never be happy in a marriage if we aren’t happy in ourselves. I watch people repeat the same cycles over and over. They keep looking for a person or a marriage or a house or a car or a career or some external factor to make them happy. These are my repeat customers, my “re-packagers”. Same crazy, different man/woman. Before we decide the marriage isn’t working, perhaps we should make sure we are working. Dysfunction within creates dysfunction without. I see beautiful women and men with unfaithful spouses. It isn’t because they weren’t pretty, skinny or hot enough. It isn’t because they weren’t good providers. Their spouse has “greener pastures” syndrome. They are on an eternal search to create perfect happiness with imperfect things. This is a perfect recipe for a lifetime of misery and certain job security for me.
I see what divorce does to people. It isn’t pleasant. Even when the end result is good, when it is used as a breakdown to eventually create a healthier person, it is a painful process. My heart goes out to divorcees. Happy people make happy marriages. Happy people make a happy world.
Photo Credit: apdk