Believing in Marriage

Naomi Freeman
Contributor
I believe in marriage.
After a failed engagement and co-habitation, I still believe in marriage. Let me tell you why.
I’ve read that co-habitation rarely leads to marriage, has high rates of violence within the relationship and generally leads to unhappiness.
From personal experience, I can tell you the failure was not because marriage can’t work. The failure lay in that we didn’t have common goals, or the security to trust that the other person would follow through.
Some young people have a fear of marriage. It’s a big, scary. I feel it is simply misunderstood.
I’ve heard my friends have the co-habitation talk: the basic conclusion is either that they need to live together, or that living together is a great way to show some commitment, but not go all the way.
That right there is why it fails.
The general assumption seems to be that, once this trial period is over, there will be a happily ever after; however, the logic just doesn’t work. If you’re going in half-assed, you’re going in half-assed, and that’s going to be very difficult to change.
Since many of these relationships fail, and these relationships are considered test-drives, our young population comes to believe that marriage will also fail. I want to tell you this assumption is wrong and that the piece of paper makes a difference.
What difference can a piece of paper make? Just like a university degree, the marriage paper is symbolic of what you did to get there. Getting the piece of paper requires quite a few things.
First, someone proposes. Someone takes the time to think about the relationship they are in, evaluate it and decide they want this thing to keep going. They then find a gift to symbolize that decision and they present it to the partner. The partner, if on the same wavelength, has either already made the same kind of considerations, or will take the time to do so.
This is much different than the often rushed, hey-my-lease-is-expiring-I-need-somewhere-to-stay, or I-can’t-find-my-t-shirt-again-I-think-it’s-time-to-move-in talks.
After the proposal, there is usually a period of a year where the partners work toward a common goal: creating a wedding. There’s a lot more involved in that than you would consider at first glance.
Planning a wedding requires teamwork. If you can’t get your organizational styles to match, this wedding isn’t going to happen.
It requires getting involved with family. If one of the two of you isn’t emotionally mature enough to manage family madness successfully, this wedding isn’t going to happen.
It requires that both people stay physically attracted to one another. If someone decides to let themselves go, to stop investing in the relationship and making the other person feel special or to sabotage the happiness, this wedding isn’t going to happen.
Co-habitation doesn’t come with this trial period of give-and-take and figuring each other out. You just throw yourself into it and hope for the best.
As you can see, engagement is as much about an individual growing as it is a partnership. If both individuals are willing to take the time and make the sacrifices to grow into a healthy partnership, they’ve taken on a serious commitment and this wedding will happen.
Once you’ve made it to the altar, you stand before all of your closest friends and family and declare a commitment to one another. It’s a transformative act that changes both the way the two of you look at each other and the way the people in the room do.

I can hear you chuckling. Yeah, yeah, it’s all sweets and roses until the divorce. Let me tell you about divorce: divorce happens when two people give up on each other rather than work through it.
If you made it through engagement year, there is no reason you can’t make it through a marriage. I’ve read that if 100 couples decide to work on their marriage, 12 fail. Most often, these failures are because it was a shotgun wedding or one partner has become more spiritually or educationally developed, and the other refuses to grow, too.
The question is: what percentage of people actually try to make the marriage work?
As much as I believe in love, it is only a teeny, tiny part of the magic formula that makes a successful marriage. Goal setting and time management are much more important. Too many people go about their lives – emotionally, financially and otherwise – without a clear idea of where they want to go. Then they feel lost and confused. In marriage, this can lead to blaming the other person.
Having common and individual goals gives you a framework in which to live your life. Managing your time well means setting aside appropriate time to achieve your goals. For example, if you and your partner wish you could learn a new language but never set a goal to do so, you’ll get caught up in working nine-to-five, meeting friends for drinks and going to the gym. You’ll never learn the new language and will be frustrated and angry at your partner.
If you both sit down and decide to make it a goal, you’ve set up a framework: you know you want to achieve ‘A’ in so many months. You can then plan your time accordingly, check out your schedules and find a time when you can both realistically meet to achieve your goal. You’ll learn the language and appreciate your partner more.
So, believe in marriage with me. And, if you like, believe in successful co-habitation. The key with either is to ask your partner before you go into whether they see this as the first step to happily ever after or if they’d just rather not cook for themselves. Then, once you’ve moved in or said your vows, set clear goals about how you want to live and prioritize your time accordingly.