I've been thinking a lot about marriage recently as I am aware of a number of friends and acquaintances whose marriages have broken down in recent years. It's hard to see friends struggle and not think about your own marriage and whether it could end the same way someday.
It has gotten me thinking a lot about the way marriage is approached in our society and how often there is this need to place blame when a marriage fails, but how impossible that is (and also not conducive to unity). I've been realizing that if there is a 'failure' or a 'fault' it is the forces of disintegration in our world that are to blame. The baseline expectations we have of men verses women, the stories (or lack there of) shared in our lives about romance and married life, and the lack of education about the process of finding a partner, of getting married and of staying married.
When I think of my own marriage, many of our expectations came from tv shows and movies or from looking at ideal relationships around us and only seeing the public faces of them. We tried to prepare ourselves by studying the Baha'i writings on marriage but no one sat down with us and talked to us about how to have a healthy, stable, reciprocal marriage, and it never occurred to us to ask (or if it did we were too shy and timid to). As a result we spent the first year of our marriage just trying to overcome our own and each other's unrealistic expectations of marriage (and our own and each other's egos). Honestly I'm not sure we've figured out what a healthy, stable, reciprocal marriage looks like. We've absolutely figured out many different ways it doesn't look :), and some things that are helpful. But marriage is not something I have really talked to many people about (in my life or in theirs). It's as if it's taboo to have conversations about the nitty, gritty, very challenging aspects of marriage and I think that taboo is a very sad thing.
I think an open honest attitude towards marriage would change the paths of so many individuals and couples. Perhaps if our expectations were more realistic, people would be more thoughtful and purposeful in picking a partner, more aware of what characteristics might cause problems for them down the road. Also, if we were encouraged to really look closely at ourselves and reflect on our own patterns of thought and behavior, and our own past traumas, and how they affect our present lives (and how all these things might come up when inviting another person into our lives), we might be more prepared for what is to come and more compassionate with one another when issues do naturally arise.
In my mind one of the most important aspects of a healthy marriage is both partners having a willingness to face and work through challenges. A recognition that they are in it for the long haul, that there won't ever come a time when everything is perfect and there is no friction or pain or hardship. The utopian version of marriage shown on TV creates a "goal" that is impossible and I think is responsible for many people never marrying and many marriages breaking down.
I feel like the downfall of a marriage, whether it is instantaneous or takes place over a long period of time is when open, honest, compassionate communication breaks down (or fails to become a pattern in a couple's lives from the beginning). I've only been married for 6 years, but my parents have been married for 40 and while I know they have overcome a great deal and don't struggle as intensely as they did in the early days of their marriage, they still struggle. They still get hurt by one another, they still are working every day to stay unified and to work through things that arise that might threaten that unity. And I believe this is the truth with every healthy marriage. Marriage is very rewarding hard work.
