Why the Happiest Day of a Woman's Life Is Also the Reason Relationships Fail
Posted: Friday, September 04, 2009
by Alisa Miller
http://alisa-miller.com
Mention marriage to any unmarried woman and you will get a
dreamy, filmy-eyed look as they conjure up in their imagination that magic day
when they walk down the aisle and exchange marriage vows with Mr Right. The fact that an almost exact opposite
reaction is encountered when you mention the word marriage to women who are
already married goes a long way to explain divorce statistics.
The question of course is what happens? Why do all the
dreams and hopes dry up so fast? Why do we, women, go from being so full of
happiness and dreams and expectations to being dissatisfied, feeling lonely and
being lost? It's impossible to speak for or generalize successfully about anyone's
inner world so the best thing about it is to actually analyze the
psychodynamics of marriage and married life.
Leaving pure sentiment aside and looking at the decision
of getting married, from a woman's point of view, begins a finite period of maximum
stress, excitement and elation as she goes through the process of organizing it
all and being the centre of attention. Whatever this does in terms of
biochemistry, psychologically it is a high which lasts as long as the
preparations for the wedding last and which is marked by its own micro-world,
intense ups and downs.
Within this context the wedding day itself is the
culmination of many complex processes and hundreds of man-hours of hard work.
Is it really the happiest day of any woman's life? Perhaps, though I find that
assertion to be deplorable as it comes with the unstated assumption that
nothing after it can quite match it. It is, however, a day marked by elation
and a strong sense of relief. Psychodynamically what follows afterwards is
never going to be quite as good. This then leads to a cycle where married life
appears to be more stable but less exciting than what happened before it and
the cycle of excitement and attention is repeated only if having children is on
the menu, a decision which comes with its own built-in biochemicals and the
problems attending motherhood.
You begin now to see a pattern developing. Our search
for excitement and attention appears to set us upon a path where children,
affairs and histrionics seem to be inevitable choices, as does the fact that
life settles into a mundane pattern where happiness appears an elusive quality.
Of course much of this is a case of perception and shared
expectations. If we view the day we say ''yes'' as the first step on a journey
which only gets better, happier, more exciting and act within that, slightly
different, context, everything changes. That however requires a certain amount
of introspection, going against a trend fuelled by popular media and
commercialism and being more certain of one's self, motives, drives and goals than
the average segment of population. The reward for the effort involved is a
life that's truly happier than most married couples, greater stability and life
choices which are governed by true mutual desires and shared goals and less by
an unacknowledged search for thrills and attention.
Good article - eye opening, and quite true.
Very true Alisa! I think so many young women of today just do not even realize the commitment of marriage and what it will be like after reaching the pinnacle point! Thanks for sharing this! I hope it helps many!
We do go into it full of expectations, don't we? Good points.