How many couples
that you know personally are in floundering marriages?
Let’s take the pessimist’s
view here: what makes you think that your relationship is different? Do you
really know what you’re getting yourself into? How well do you really know her?
Yes, she might be your soulmate,
but even soulmates have bad tempers, and expensive tastes…
Research has proved that
the first year of marriage is the most stressful. And pop psychology has taught
us that men and women come from different planets. Ask any married man what he
learned about marriage after the first year and he will say something like
this:
#1. It really is true:
Men assume that women will not change after marriage, while women are convinced
that they can and will change their husbands.
Men are, for the most part,
honest, straightforward creatures. They’ve analyzed their potential spouse and
they’ve accepted her foibles. They think they can live with her faults. They
concentrate on the positive qualities. If she’s basically a calm, organized
person now, she should remain that way, shouldn’t she?
But oh how different is a
woman’s perspective about such matters! Women accept themselves as irrational
to a point, and they realize that changing themselves to suit their
circumstances is the only way to deal with life. If they are moldable, men must
be too, right? And with this firm belief does a woman enter into marriage: that
he will love her enough to change for her, or that she will succeed in
demonstrating the rationality of her argument, that this
certain quality of his is disagreeable, and that that particular habit is
unacceptable.
What to expect: That a wife will change. She just
might seem like a completely different person after marriage. She will probably
expect her husband to change too, to suit any whim that takes her fancy. Can
you make allowances for this? Do you know which of your traits she finds the
most annoying, and are you willing to give that up for love? What about her do
you find most endearing, and could you live without it if it were to disappear
overnight?
#2. It also is true
that familiarity breeds contempt
Mark Twain once said “The
reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity
to get familiar with it.” The US
army doesn’t just disapprove of fraternization between recruits and officers,
it considers it a criminal offence. Considering that women are genetically
wired to repeat themselves (read: nag) until they get their way, have you
considered the odds that you might like her less the more you see of her? Are
you completely sure that you can live with your girlfriend’s annoying habits
and her little quirks for the rest of your life without wanting to pull your
own hair out?
What to think
about: Neither
men nor women betray their true selves while dating. How much of what each of
you appears to be is really you?
#3. They tell this
to women, but men should remember it too: don’t do anything during the first few months
that you don’t want to continue doing all your life.
Expectations, anyone? It’s
only natural that if you begin doing something nice for her, she will expect
you to continue doing it for the rest of your lives. What she learns about you
in the first few months is going to shape the way she supposes you will behave
forever. Whether it’s taking out the trash or buying
her flowers or gadgets on every monthly anniversary, she will remember
these things, and if you stop doing them, you don’t love her anymore, sob sob…
What to consider: The problem here is that small as
well as big things merit the same careful consideration. Most husbands aim to
please at the start of a marriage, even though they might later forget what
they consider insignificant to the large picture. Women, the divinely
contradictory sex, associate affection with symbolic gestures.
To marry or not to marry
her…no easy answer to this one. How well do you both understand each other? How
many shared values and core beliefs can you boast of? If you’re not quite sure,
maybe tying the knot is not the right decision…