Marry for the Right Reasons

If you want to enter the heart of relationship – and enjoy the abundant fruits and riches to be found there, marry for the right reasons. When you marry for the right reasons it is as if you have already passed Go three times and are leaping immediately into the fourth truth of self-care.

Marrying for the right reasons is taking care of you from the onset. It is the simplest way to limit the struggle and suffering stage and move directly towards the ultimate phase of personal power and selflessness. First, what are some wrong reasons to marry?

The Wrong Reasons for Marriage

Because you Love Someone

Generally, we start out equipped only with the innocent belief that love is all it takes to make a long-term relationship work. And by love we mean conditional love: I’ll love you if you’ll love me. The truth is, conditional love is not nearly enough to withstand the tremendous power of unconscious forces: the hurts, fears, and rages of two wounded creatures. Love is not enough to get anyone through the wilds of long-term relationship. If this is what is leading you to the alter stop and simply savor this someone you love. Don’t burden the relationship with marriage.

Because everyone is supposed to Get Married

People marry, even when they are not ready to, because marriage is taken for granted in our society. Despite a massive cultural shift that accepts unmarried couples living together and acknowledges that about half of all marriages end in divorce, I constantly find even among the most educated clients the persistence of the old fashioned belief that being married is somehow the proper, mature, normal way to live, that it makes us socially acceptable.

A related belief is that, despite all evidence to the contrary, everyone else is succeeding at it. It often looks easy from the outside. The thinking goes: if everyone else can do it, we ought to be able to succeed also.

Because Other People want you to Get Married

One of my clients, Daniel R., was eager to please everyone around him. A very bright, successful computer-wiz in his thirties, he was enjoying a wonderful life: mountain-climbing, jazz-playing, flying his own plane, following a fulfilling career, and living with an intelligent, lovely girlfriend. Though he seemed to have everything, Daniel came to see me in distress. Engaged to get married, he didn’t actually want to be married. His girlfriend, her family and his family all were pressuring him to tie the knot.

Though knowing he wasn’t ready, Daniel wanted to be a good guy and acceded to their wishes. Such pressure is tough to resist, especially if, as in Daniel’s case, you are a good, obliging, conflict-avoiding person. As Pepy’s quote above suggests, few people who are married actually enjoy it, yet they are nonetheless insistent that the next generation, ready or not, join them.

Because Marriage and Family Offer Security

Most of us have this great fantasy of wonderful, warm, caring company and shared experience. We gloss over the reality that many marriages and families are filled with little more than wall to wall suffering. If you peel back enough layers of image, and look closely at almost any couple you know, you will find a great deal of frustration, pain, and unhappiness.

The cinema genius Ingmar Bergman writes of his astonishment while reading his mother’s diary after her death. During her 40-year marriage to a widely-respected minister she had never complained. She and her husband looked the perfect couple. But she had been miserable from their first year. Her husband had been a cruel, tyrannical man and as a result she had suffered depression for many decades. (The director used this sad story in his wonderful film “Franny and Alexander”.)

Because Marriage Means Steady Sex

This has got to be one of the most tragic-comic beliefs and greatest sources of disillusionment. Most couples leave their sexual passion at the chapel. Though many people who have not been through it find this amazing, it is common for couples to go months and even years without making love. And these are often individuals who prior to marriage were prolifically sexual with each other or with other partners. If it’s primarily sex that you are after – don’t get married.

The Right Reasons for Marriage

Because you are in love and you have been together long enough to know you are compatible and you are both deeply committed to the long-term process of knowing yourselves.

Marry for the right reasons. Is someone more eager than you are for you to marry? If so, why are you letting them influence you? If you love your partner, what is your objection to simply dating or even living with them? Are your reasons for marriage suited to long-term commitment?

About the Author:

Jonathan Goodman-Herrick, LCSW, has worked with couples for over 30 years, is the author of The Heart of Relationship, and has himself been married for 40 years. He and his wife, Dr. Pearlyn Goodman-Herrick, both see couples in their Mill Valley and San Francisco offices. Find out more about Jonathan and Marin Couples Counseling at: www.MarinCouplesCounseling.com