According to Leslie Becker-Phelps, “All marriages have their ups and downs; all people have their strengths and weaknesses; and all couples have areas of disagreement. But those who remain happy manage to view their relationship through a positive lens. They see the parts of their marriage that are most positive as the parts that are essential. However, most importantly, they are flexible about this. As the positive and negative aspects of their relationship shift with time, so does their judgment about what is essential — but they must always focus on the most positive aspects in the moment.
Along with this positive perspective, couples view their spouse’s problems, imperfections, or annoying habits in a way that neutralizes their impact. One approach they suppose to use is “viewing these things in a benevolent way”. For instance, a wife might understand her husband’s snapping as the result of a hard day instead of thinking of him as just being disrespectful. Such positive attributions help relationships to remain stable and supportive.
Another way partners remain happy together is by being aware of — and acknowledging the positives while allowing themselves to get upset about specific problems. In contrast, spouses who tend to be more blaming and less understanding create a negative environment at home. For them, specific problems appear bigger and tend to snowball. It’s amazing how a toilet seat left in the upright position can ruin a couple’s whole day together!
Some people are inherently better at seeing the positive side of situations and understanding others from a more compassionate perspective. And they will certainly be happier for it. But for the rest of us, this is a skill that can be learned — when people are interested in developing it. For instance, couples can practice sharing what makes them feel loved and then practice doing those things.
Unfortunately, life sometimes makes it hard to be positive. We all have only a limited amount of time and energy. So when problems pile up (such as job stress, deaths of loved ones, illnesses, problems related to children), people’s inner resources become strained. Even the most charitable people can reach their limit, making it difficult to approach their marriage in positive ways. Because of this, it’s important for couples to nurture their relationship during the good times. This way they have more positive feelings to rely upon when life gets tough.
In the end, maintaining a happy marriage is, to a large extent, about how couples approach each other. The more they can see their marriage in a positive light and can be supportive and understanding of each other, the more successful their marriage will be”.
To achieve a long and lasting marriage, Rose Pollard pointed out that “couples’ (italics-mine) ‘in-advanced age’ means that they (italics-mine) have many of the anxieties that can be as challenging as the marriage anxieties for the newlyweds”. That's one of the things we cannot forget about, ‘time’, because time doesn't mean that much."- (Rose Pollard). Is it better to ‘marry your age?’ I think Pollard’s point does not suggest that it matters if marriage meant ‘marrying your age’ or not. It meant that anxieties in marriage can challenge our different expectations about marriage and love irrespective of age gap or differences.
As we know, men and women have different kind of expectations about marriage and love as I mentioned above. The best thing is to talk about these expectations before and during the beginning of the marriage. The newly married, as well as the ‘old cargos’ in the ‘industry’ should learn to “take their time and get to know one another everyday till death do them part. They got to know if they like all the things that each person stands for so as to “be forgiving and patient and always say ‘I love you’ once in a while."-Rose Pollard).
Most of the time, our victims, I mean the people we crucify, abuse, hail, praise and defend, might seem to me that either they could not give each other positive feedback when it was necessary. For example, they might have failed to tell each other one thing every night (night-the most appropriate time for couples-you know what I mean?) that he or she appreciated what he or she had done that day; or were going asleep like enemies; or never talked things (their differences) over; or never gave time to expressed themselves even if it took the whole night to solve their problem. It could be that they might have not been familiar with the Swedish way of saying “the grass is not greener on the other side” or they did not understand its implications. Perhaps, they did all of these, yet their marriage could not stand. Marriage doesn’t seem to be an easy graduate school. It is not a bed of roses either. In this ‘business’ and/or ‘vocation’ called marriage, each party must respect each other’s opinions even if they sometimes don’t understand them.
To us out there, we should try to help advice couples who are at the verge of losing and/or loosing their marriage bonds. It doesn’t help when we chastise, castigate, crucify, hail, praise and/or adore any party’s opinions and/or mistakes. To the unmarried out there, don’t even mind, it shall soon be your own turn. You stand out there at akimbo and gossip, criticize, hail, praise and all worth not. Let’s see how you will school and graduate in this ‘all important institution/school. Peace to us all!
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