Many people fall in love.
I have, many times. I fell out of love, many times as well.
Many people marry, because of love. Or so they say.
In time, I discovered that love is almost always over-rated.
In time, I learned that marriage is almost always under-rated.
In time, I also discovered that you cannot necessarily love the person you have fallen for.
Love is a decision, not just a feeling. Decision to be with a particular person through anything reality can bring. Decision to tolerate, give, take, deserve and persevere. Definitely, it goes a longer way than the fairy tales bring you to; it goes farther than ‘living happily ever after’.
Many have become prey to the vindictive to the initial ‘fallen in love’ phase. They mould their lovers to become that of a fantasy character where wrongs will deserve severe, fatal punishments and happiness only defined by crappy love song dedications and number of stuffed toys received.
At this stage, you can easily get into a defensive mode when your partner turns up late for a date, or forgets an anniversary, or says ‘no’ to your petty qualms, keep in mind that commitment (marriage) gives you no room for that.
When you experience a tragedy, when you hit a wall, when one of you has cancer, and you still can see that person as the person you loved before, when you feel that the person you lie in bed with every night is worth your sacrifice, then you have the right to call what you experiencing is love. Ana maybe then you can have the right, to marry.
Now before you judge me for being cynical and sceptical about marriage, because I’m not anywhere near any kind of commitment to that of the opposite sex, I would like to stress here that I am not writing to condemn the institution of marriage. I’m writing because I was inspired by the many happy and sorry stories after the ‘I do’s’. Clearly, there are many responsibilities that the rings on your fingers carry. And not too long in the marriage is when most of them realize that the ‘I do’s’ are not always do-able. I am baffled, most of all, on how a piece of paper can change two people, for the worse.
‘If 40 years doesn’t get you to commit, I wonder what does’, Dr. Meredith Grey told her fellow surgeons. Her patient’s wife, who has been married to the patient for 40 years, confessed to Grey that not too many years ago, she started having an affair with another married man-who happens to be her best friend’s husband.
When Grey asked why, the cheating wife answered, ‘Have you ever been so in love, that you strip away pieces of yourself to adapt, and accommodate to a union, and eventually, long after that, you look up, and you wonder who you are exactly? That’s what I felt about my marriage to my husband. I love him. But I lost myself’.
So the cheating wife found herself, when she was with another guy. What does that mean? Does it mean that she has successfully found her old self-a selfish person who cheats on a guy she has vowed to commit 40 years ago? Was that the person she was looking for? Was that the ‘lost self’?
I am more than sure that 40 years of anything is old. And as old things go, there will be wear and tear. There’s only too much that a 40 year old thing can take. But that doesn’t give us the right to break a promise. Shouldn’t we at least consider, before we marry, that a ‘lifetime’ is a long way to go and that we are bound to hit some walls along the way? And because of that, we should promise to try not to bail, unless it is utterly impossible to bear? And to bail because ‘I have lost my sense of real self’ is irritably selfish. Didn’t she ever think that the husband might feel the same thing, but didn’t react on it the way she did?
It is hard, must be, to be unselfish. And marriage demands you to be just that. To replace ‘I’ with ‘we’. To give. To consider. To most of all, share. And in marriage, in time, you become either very good at sharing, or you can go another way around and change for the worse.
‘Don’t think too much of a marriage’, said a friend who has been married with two kids, when I asked if I were too paranoid and too analytical. ‘Don’t have too high an expectation on anything. Take it day by day’, she continued.
Don’t have high expectations. Dinner always on time, good laughs all around, abundant attention, continuing happiness, the ending of all life’s problems. Don’t have too high of expectations like those.
Another male friend of mine, a Chinese, said, ‘Marriage is work. But the companionship is irreplaceable. It makes it worth all the effort. Although I must admit, there are times when I took the companionship for granted, I’m only human. But I do appreciate it very much’
Commitment is not a torturous thing. I’m not implying that. Maybe it is rewarding, given that you keep to your promise, and understand that a lifetime is a long way to go.
‘Kalau rasa dah bersedia, kahwin aje. Jangan takut. Because takut or not, the challenges are the same, and they will come. No matter how much you prepare yourself, or how much you analyze before you marry, when the real challenges come, you will find yourself knowing nothing. But if you have love and the will to make it work, it will work. It’s not how much you know, but how much you are willing to do’, was a statement of another male friend.
:)
Maybe I am too analytical. And maybe I’m just a coward. Maybe there are too many bad examples of marriage around me. Maybe I’m just scared. Maybe I will make myself believe that I love a person so much that I am willing to spend my lifetime with him. Maybe I will forget what I say in this blog when I am married.
Maybe, many married individuals have felt and thought the same way I do right now, before they got married. Maybe they just think I’m trying to look smart. Maybe they think I’m a bit stuck up by admitting that I am stepping on more solid grounds than they are, by being analytical.
Maybe they are right.
Maybe I’ll comment this posting of mine after I get married. :)
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