| AGDee |
02-19-2009 12:44 AM |
No worries folks, it's all good. I posted it after all. When any relationship fails, there is "fault" on both parts. Yeah, both of them acted differently after being married than they did while we were dating. Dating is a lot of fun. You go out, you hang out when you want to, you have fun. Marriage is MUCH harder. I think even happily married people will admit that. Suddenly, you're sharing housework, finances, and most often, eventually, parenting duties. Suddenly, it makes a big difference when he works long hours or golfs on three golf leagues or buys a $900 TV without mentioning it to you. Who knew he wouldn't give that up when there was an infant at home, day care bills and diapers to be changed? Who knew he wouldn't put his wife and child first at that point? You can't really know until it happens. Who knew he would freak out at having to live on a budget? Just because he lived at home until you married (when he was 30), he's an accountant, you figure he'll be all good financially but in reality, he has never balanced his checkbook! There's a lot of stuff you just don't know. And then, there's how you react to those changes. People are going to change over their lifetimes no matter what. Sometimes it's for the better and people grow closer together. Sometimes it is for the worse and they grow apart. Sometimes they become so resentful of each other that they say mean and hurtful things, creating wounds that won't ever really heal. We don't always handle the situation in the best way possible. However, we have to take each experience and learn from it. What I learned from mine is that I'm probably not really cut out to be married, even though I was brainwashed to "go to college, get a career, get married, have babies". I have no regrets because I got two wonderful children out of the deal. I'm very independent by nature, more independent than I thought I was (or could be!). But, there's nothing to be afraid of, really. It's simply this thing called life. There are ups and downs along the way. The ups don't mean you're a good person and the downs don't mean you're a bad person. We all just do the best we can to live our life in the best way we know how.
Yes, I'm very cynical about marriage personally. I do have a hard time shutting my mouth about it some days..lol. I should be more careful about it around the idealists. But, I tend to be practical too. Relationships are hard work. I didn't get much benefit from either of my marriages so I didn't stick with them. Along the way though, I also learned that I didn't "need" a man, which was the most liberating discovery I've ever made about myself. It freed me to be who I really am instead of what society (family, etc) expected of me.
I know people who consider themselves very happily married whose marriages would make me miserable if I was the one in them. I know others who are truly happily married in marriages that I could probably tolerate (lol.. probably). I see many people with completely different expectations of how a marriage should be. All of those expectations should be explored long before marriage.
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