Marriage...

After the book Sold by Zana Muhsen and the recent wedding, felt like writing this.

Marriage is getting to be more out of fashion these days.... divorce rate is high. And we have people advising Tiger Woods to embrace multiple partners; polyamory. Just learnt that word. 8)

There are couples who spend a small fortune for the wedding; those package thing. But 5 or so years down the road, many divorce! The small fortune spent, messy divorce sometimes, kids and wedding photos with no where to hang.

Monay used to drum this into my head, our spouse is to be our best friend.. Yup! Marriage is supposed to be made of 2 friends. And like friends, we've to be able to take interest in each other's hobbies and likings.... and bear with the idiosyncrasies, change for the better, share each other's burdens.... You know how it is like when we were all growing up. Most of us had a best buddy.

The best buddy thingy is kinda like a training ground for marriage. These days... I wonder whether kids are all too busy even to cultivate meaningful friendships. My best friend and I used to do lots of things together.... and doing things together didn't mean attending tuitions and cramming sessions. We actually had a lot of time to sit down and talk, share our dreams... it helped to put things in place sometimes. Communicative skill are developed. Best friends quarrel and they learn to make up too! LOL! A good best friend allows good things to take nascent shapes in our young minds....

I think there's a need too for couples to cultivate activities (other than kids) that both can do together out of shared interests. Very often the shared interests (responsibilities) trickle into just the kids and the house. And when the kids leave, suddenly both are left with an empty house and not much in common. Add that with the possibility of the rest of everything getting hammered into haziness by the nitty gritty unpleasantries, in-laws, quirky habits, lack of understanding, etc, etc... we are left grappling with our own dissatisfactions.... dissatisfactions can be very cancerous.

We might even feel a little disillusioned even as a result. Among the older gen, they kinda stick it out cos they're probably more stoic. But the younger ones are more like this... not 'ngam' any more, you go your way and I, mine.

Marriage is a partnership....and sacrifice; not one that runs on one person making all the decisions or taking charge or having things his/her way. Think tandem bike... though one is in front but if both pedal together, it's kinda easy. But if only one pedals, it becomes very tiring. And they have to agree to go the same direction. One has to sacrifice his direction sometimes... take a different route.... but somehow if two heads agree, they'd still get to their destination.

A good partnership weathers good and bad times together, kinda like the duri and onak thingy. Like in a badminton game, a good partner covers for his partner on the latter's off days. A marriage is like that - you cover for each other and you learn to accept the mistakes made, you carry on. You make the attempts to change for the better even if it's painful to change sometimes. But it takes two to make it work.... and it helps to have God in it too.... that I learned early on from watching some of the adults of my childhood.