Psalm 139:14 KJV I will praise thee; for I am fearfully [and] wonderfully made: marvellous [are] thy works; and [that] my soul knoweth right well.
Our marriage was nothing short of a miracle. The few people who knew me at a very personal level can concur. I remember praying to God that He should be the one to find me my husband and it shouldn’t be through any human intervention. God fulfilled my wish. It’s hard to believe that 5 years have passed by so quickly. Everyone’s marriage has a usual background, however, ours had a unique and interesting one.
Back in those days when I was looking out for a suitable partner, I came across so many characters and I also heard of a few. I remember there was a particular guy who was a prospective but our match didn’t click for certain reasons. He was my cousin’s friend and later on she told me how he had proposed to the woman he had decided to marry. He got her a ring, put it on a ribbon, tied the ribbon around a puppy’s neck and proposed to her. So romantic! When I heard about it, I can’t deny feeling like I had missed something. This was only one of the countless stories. Now, I look back and realize such things don’t even matter. True love is not built solely on romance, but on many important things. Some people start out with so much romance, yet as the years go by they simply end up putting up with each other. Living life like that is a pain. According to me ideal marriages are the those where both partners are united spiritually and mentally.
During the partner search phase, as time went by and things failed to happen, I was driven to settle down for something lesser than what I deserved. I guess this happens with most people. At one point, I was willing to settle down for something I clearly knew I wasn’t made to handle. Thank God, He was in control and He made sure I was united with the guy who was a perfect match for me, mainly spiritually. Had I got together with someone else, whom I had assumed was apt for me, we would have made a perfect recipe for disaster.
Life after marriage is pretty easy when it involves just two people. Lesser responsibilities, more time with each other and more rest. It’s quite relaxing that way. Throw kids into the picture and it’s a commotion. I remember when we had our first baby, things took a u-turn. Our beautiful, blissful married life suddenly became a life full of unrest and chaos. We fought more than we got along. We found the sudden task of taking care of a baby very daunting. Life changes tremendously after having kids especially if we’re living in a nuclear family setup. So much to do, such less time, mid-life issues with health and family creep up, there’s hardly ever time to talk, the home is always a mess, we’re always on the run and we hardly get the rest we need. It’s hard to keep up the romance in such scenarios. Our spouse becomes another human being with whom we interact daily and we hardly get those fluttery feelings around them, which we experienced during our initial interactions. Romance dies before it can even sprout. But that’s what married life is all about. Romance dies a miserable death when kids enter the picture. However there is a beautiful bond of love which develops immensely, and it is ever present though it may not be visible.
Romance is a lot like the waves on the shore, they look strong and intense but they don’t go deep, whereas love within marriage is a lot like a deep-sea current, you can’t see it but it’s there and it’s very strong. I remember an incident from a trip to a resort in Chennai. We were taken to sea on a boat and were thrown off with life jackets on while holding on to a thick rope. It was the first time I experienced a strong current, everything looked so calm and still on the surface of the sea, but this strong current underneath made all of us drift far away from the boat and finally they had to pull us closer to the boat before hauling us in.
The one thing that really amazes me over our 5 year relationship is our similar mindsets. I had always thought it was impossible for me to find a guy from Chennai who has the same mentality I do. During my partner search I found most guys to be hypocritical characters which totally turned me off. I dealt with a lot of hypocritical characters among family and coworkers and I knew in my mind that if ever I ended up marrying such a character, I would surely divorce without second thoughts. My husband was the only odd one out from the whole lot of Tamil men I met during my partner search. I can say he is a level above me when it comes to dealing frankly with others.
It’s quite funny how I bumped into my husband 5 years ago. I had almost given up hope of getting married at that point. I was a paid member twice on an Indian matrimonial site and all the characters I ever bumped into were weirdos. My paid subscription expired, however my account was still active. I used to get random messages from interested guys every now and then. I had received one such message but I wasn’t interested so I logged in to reply and decline, lo and behold my husband’s mini-profile was displayed in the bottom left corner of the page. I opened up his profile and thought, okay this guy looks quite innocent and sweet, so let’s see if he shows interest in my profile. I wasn’t happy about him being in Dubai, because I never wanted to return there. I used to instantly reject NRI alliances but my husband’s profile was the only exception, probably because God had a different plan for my life.
That’s how it all started out and then we started communicating regularly. We first met on 24th of December, 2013 with our families, got engaged on 4th of January, 2014 and got married on 4th of March, 2014. December 24th, 2013 was one of our sweetest memories. In the initial days after meeting my husband, as any girl who is getting to know a new person, I had many many fears. I wondered if he was genuine. I had a whole whirlwind of thoughts running through my mind. We got married and I still had a lot of thoughts and fears. The first two years were the hardest I would say. We came from two rival areas within Tamil Nadu and our upbringing was worlds apart. We had only two things common then, our spiritual belief and our mindset. The remaining aspects, we really had a tough time adapting. But now 5 years later, we’re more adapted and tuned in to each other. He doesn’t talk much and I’ve grown quieter being around him (I’ve got noisy kids to compensate), and usually his angry words would turn up my fury within seconds. These days I’ve become a professional at dealing with it by playing deaf on most occasions.
When I think about both us, I always feel we’re bonded at a deeper level. We hardly talk but we’re inseparable. It’s so difficult to express! When we’re away from each other, we hate the separation. When we’re together, we hardly converse but we’re peaceful. That peace is precious. I would say this is the first time in my life, where sometimes there’s so much brewing on the outside and yet there is so much peace and calm on the inside.
This is what I usually say about marriage, “Marriage is like fermented wine, the longer it ages the better it tastes.”
I pray that our marriage keeps getting better with Christ at the center and that we’ll be a blessing to others. Before I conclude, I’ll leave you with a few points that I’ve learnt over the last 5 years of my married life.
1. Keep Christ at the center of your marriage – This is the single most important point in marriage. It’s a general tendency to enter married life with a lot of expectations, however as a spiritual being, we have a soul that cannot be satisfied by another human. God takes first place and by keeping Him first, we always find strength to tackle day to day marital issues with the right mindset. Married life can get extremely stressful and more often than not, humans tend to react irrationally under stress. At any stressful moment, it’s best to seek comfort and consolation from God rather than a spouse, since they maybe equally burdened and in a helpless situation themselves. If we focus on getting pampered by our spouse and they let us down or speak inappropriate words, it would only lead to unneeded frustration. Therefore it’s best to cling to God and be strong enough to support our spouse so that both partners can understand the situation help each other out in the best way possible. This is why I reiterate that it is important to be married to someone who is at the same level spiritually. I’ve seen many born-again Christians compromise on this point, to eventually struggle later on in life.
2. There is no perfect marriage – I’ve met couples who have unrealistic expectations from their spouses and that has ever been the reason for dispute among many of them. No one is perfect, unfortunately, and no aspect of life is perfect either. That’s just how the human race is, everyone next to us, even members of our own family have certain attitudes and mindsets that we may not agree with. Marriage is definitely give and take. It’s all about maintaining the peace within our families. All happily married couples who seem picture perfect and have completed several years together, would not have reaped happiness overnight, they would have worked hard to be where they’re at. They weren’t perfect matches brought together instantly into a perfect marriage.
3. Don’t compare your spouse with anyone – Be thankful for what you’ve got. A lot of people don’t follow this, I know because I’ve met some of them personally. Some women usually say, “I’ve met a lot of men before marriage and they were perfect, yet I ended up with this useless person.” The truth is no one is perfect. People may seem perfect from the little you know about them from the outside, but you never know someone inside out till you have lived with them for a while.
Some women consider me lucky when they find out my husband is very helpful with day to day household works and with looking after the kids. I can’t deny that’s an amazing quality to find in a husband and I appreciate it every single day. But he’s also quiet (really quiet), speaks extremely harshly when angry (which I hate), rarely accepts he was wrong and is the last person to patch-up after an argument (therefore, I tend to avoid developing one). I’ve heard of men who are the first to apologize, say sorry and patch-up and are more calmer with their use of words. Women married to these men just have something else, completely different to deal with. In fact there is is always something to deal with no matter whom we’re married to. I also remember one lady tell me that her husband always used me as an example, because apparently I’m good at managing the home, and they used to fight often because of this. I told her, “Well your husband doesn’t realize, maybe I’m good at managing the home, but I have some negative traits too, like I can be really arrogant and sometimes when I decide that I won’t do something, no one can convince me to do it, even if it is the right thing to do. Basically, in somethings I have my way, whether my husband likes it or not and I don’t think your husband would ever tolerate that kind of behaviour from you. Thankfully mine does. You had better point this out to him and ask him to be happy with what he’s got.”
I think comparison is a crazy disease which has become all the more common these days, thanks to social media. No couple would put up a photo of their faces after a scuffle, but they’ve got all those romantic and cheeky ones up on display for the world to see. They wouldn’t post a picture of the meal that just hit the floor after a quarrel and the mess it created but they’ll post pictures of meals they enjoyed together on the good days, while they were sticking their 32 teeth out.
4. Don’t keep secrets – I didn’t learn this point over 5 years of my married life, but it was my policy from day 1 and luckily I found a guy who lives by the same rule. Generally in India, if you’re about to get into an arranged marriage the first advice elders and friends give you is never speak about your past. That was one advice I never heeded and neither did my husband and both of us have no regrets. Trust survives only when you know for certain that the person beside you does not lie. In one of my recent posts, I had mentioned how important it is to never lie to your kids and to always speak the truth. It holds true for marriage as well. I know a lot of couples who keep things from their spouses and I really don’t understand how their dynamics work, but I cannot imagine sharing my life with a guy who doesn’t know who the ‘real me’ is. It must be very hurting when a spouse discovers that they’ve not been told the entire truth. It also gets difficult to develop trust this way and that could keep a marriage from being whole and fulfilling.
5. Keep grudges and ego at bay – It’s important to realize that both of you are on the same team and not on opposing teams. Many couples live like they’re playing for the opposing team and it is worse off when their families get involved, adding fuel to the fire. As couples we have a family of our own and our top priority should be to nurture and care for our new family rather than dwell on the past or heed the advice of our parents or family members. Not all parents or family members are wise enough to counsel aptly on marital issues. Most of the time they take sides which only makes things worse.
I know of couples who are putting up with each only for the sake of their kids. They hold grudges against each other, sometimes over incidents that happened years ago. Their hatred slowly builds up over time to such toxic levels that they can’t stand each other. They’d much rather pack up and leave to their parents’ home, given the chance. That’s definitely not the way to live and creates a very unhealthy environment for children to grow in. Children thrive when they watch parents working together as a team, but constant bickering, frequent quarrels and ill treating each other, traumatizes children mentally and emotionally, the consequences of which are long-term. Me and my husband do go to bed angry once in a while after some major disagreement. Lately I try not to talk back or worsen the argument, because one thing leads to another and sometimes it gets violent and that makes the kids extremely tense and they are still too small to makes sense out of the whole incident. They also register unpleasant incidents in their mind very clearly. I usually try my best to stay quiet for that heated moment and we go back to being normal the next day. Sometimes it helps to ignore, do selective hearing or even stay quiet. Peace is precious, never forfeit it for the world.
6. We can’t have our way all the time – There are times when we need to cave in. No one would put up with a person who keeps on demanding that things go their way all the time. This applies to all relationships, not only marriage. A relationship that focuses solely on self and self gratification tend to be toxic and smothering. Entering marriage with an attitude of service is good, because along the way, we need to make a whole lot of sacrifices, sometimes for the benefit of the spouse, sometimes for the benefit of the children, sometimes even for the welfare of the family we’re building. Feminism in marriage will not work at all, neither does chauvinism. As couples we need to understand our marriage goals and work together to succeed in achieving those. There are times when we need to do certain things that we wouldn’t or couldn’t imagine doing, just because we love our spouse. I’ve had to get off my high horse and do certain things at times which I didn’t agree with or had to bite my tongue doing just because my husband would be happy.
So there they are, 6 points which I personally feel are very important in marriage. Marriage is a beautiful union but it’s not a bed of roses. It’s a lot of hard work. We need to keep God first and keep ourselves strong enough for the other person to lean on. But it’s a precious bond nonetheless. I for certain would not have enjoyed being single. I love the way things are now, hectic and challenging but still satisfying. I love doing life with my husband and wouldn’t trade it for the world. The Bible too says that two are better than one. Here’s the verse:
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 KJV
9. Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
10. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
11. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?
12. And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
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