Marriage Won’t Improve Your Relationship

Here’s a hard but indisputable fact, getting married won’t improve your love relationship. Unfortunately, some people think it will, and get married hoping it will.

Believing that it will is similar to the let’s have a baby to improve our love relationship idea. I think this is worth saying again for those of you still resisting the idea, getting married won’t improve your love relationship.

There, I’ve said it twice, so now we can go on to the why not? Isn’t marriage supposed to magnify the love you feel for each other? Not really. It could simply magnify the responsibilities you feel for each other instead, with drastic consequences.

Here’s what you need to think about, if the love you are currently feeling for each other is strong, then a marriage won’t diminish it for the two of you. At least not by much.

I think getting married has more to do with creating a legal partnership to establish commitment and a family structure for children, property, and assets. For the practical stuff.

Love is either there or not there. Marriage will only stress a love relationship with a weaker underlying feeling of love. This belief in the power of marriage to increase or, God forbid, create the feeling of love between two people, is extremely misguided.

If you are marrying for other reasons like security, power, money, anything else but love, if you have a clear consciousness, go for it. But love does not respond to marriage. In many ways, love and the depth of it is what makes it likely that a marriage will endure.

Love is what will make the inevitable conflicts or disagreements that occur easier to live through and resolve. Without it, or with a lesser degree than is required, marriage becomes a hotbed of incompatible individual differences and struggles for control. The motivation to change isn’t there.

If you find yourself in love with someone who is not loving you to the degree to which you feel is necessary, it is premature to think about marriage. Running to the alter will only result in a subsequent run to the divorce court. Take your time. Work on the relationship.

See whether or not doing things differently, whatever they might be, elicits a different response in your relationship. People ordinarily tend to prefer familiarity. We get used to the way things are in a relationship. Changing is always harder. It makes people uncomfortable. That’s the nature of change. Without the discomfort you don’t have change. You have to accept this.

So if you want things to be different change what it is you are thinking, feeling, or doing in the relationship and tolerate the discomfort in you and your lover. Don’t make the mistake of trying to change your lover. That’s a complete waste of time. Nobody changes unless they want to.

Change yourself and watch what happens. If your lover has been holding back the love he or she really feels toward you, you should see some interesting feelings emerge. Then you can decide whether or not what you are seeing, hearing, and feeling is good enough to be married to. If the answer is no, bye-bye. If the answer is yes, take your lover by the hand, it’s now the time to run to the alter.

Comments? Welcome. Dr. Tom Jordan

 

 

 

 

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Dr. Jordan

Dr. Thomas Jordan is a clinical psychologist, certified interpersonal psychoanalyst, author, professor, and love life researcher.

2 Comments

  1. http://pars-travian.ir/ on December 6, 2012 at 5:28 am

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    • Dr. Tom Jordan on December 6, 2012 at 8:26 am

      Hey, thanks a lot for your inspiring words. Dr.J.

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