Having been married only a year and a half, I’ve recently come to the conclusion that marriage isn’t for me.
Now before you start making assumptions, keep reading.
I met my wife in high school when we were 15 years old. We were friends for ten years until…until we decided no longer wanted to be just friends. 🙂 I strongly recommend that best friends fall in love. Good times will be had by all.
Nevertheless, falling in love with my best friend did not prevent me from having certain fears and anxieties about getting married. The nearer Kim and I approached the decision to marry, the more I was filled with a paralyzing fear. Was I ready? Was I making the right choice? Was Kim the right person to marry? Would she make me happy?
Father’s Advice
Then, one fateful night, I shared these thoughts and concerns with my dad.
Perhaps each of us have moments in our lives when it feels like time slows down or the air becomes still and everything around us seems to draw in, marking that moment as one we will never forget.
My dad giving his response to my concerns was such a moment for me. With a knowing smile he said, “Seth, you’re being totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple:Â marriage isn’t for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family. Not just for the in-laws and all of that nonsense, but for your future children. Who do you want to help you raise them? Who do you want to influence them? Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.”
It was in that very moment that I knew that Kim was the right person to marry. I realized that I wanted to make her happy; to see her smile every day, to make her laugh every day. I wanted to be a part of her family, and my family wanted her to be a part of ours. And thinking back on all the times I had seen her play with my nieces, I knew that she was the one with whom I wanted to build our own family.
My father’s advice was both shocking and revelatory. It went against the grain of today’s “Walmart philosophy”, which is if it doesn’t make you happy, you can take it back and get a new one.
No, a true marriage (and true love) is never about you. It’s about the person you love—their wants, their needs, their hopes, and their dreams. Selfishness demands, “What’s in it for me?”, while Love asks, “What can I give?”
Marriage Isn’t For You
Some time ago, my wife showed me what it means to love selflessly. For many months, my heart had been hardening with a mixture of fear and resentment. Then, after the pressure had built up to where neither of us could stand it, emotions erupted. I was callous. I was selfish.
But instead of matching my selfishness, Kim did something beyond wonderful—she showed an outpouring of love. Laying aside all of the pain and anguish I had caused her, she lovingly took me in her arms and soothed my soul.
I realized that I had forgotten my dad’s advice. While Kim’s side of the marriage had been to love me, my side of the marriage had become all about me. This awful realization brought me to tears, and I promised my wife that I would try to be better.
To all who are reading this article—married, almost married, single, or even the sworn bachelor or bachelorette—I want you to know that marriage isn’t for you. No true relationship of love is for you. Love is about the person you love.
And, paradoxically, the more you truly love that person, the more love you receive. And not just from your significant other, but from their friends and their family and thousands of others you never would have met had your love remained self-centered. Truly, love and marriage isn’t for you. It’s for others.
Thoroughly enjoyed this posting. Thank you for sharing.
the best posting I’ve ever read. thank you for sharing.
This is real a good advise to everybody, not just to singles. The more we live, the more we learn.
Thank you.
You are great! I have a feeling that you’re a Mormon as I read your post! You really are making a good example for the church! Keep it up!
And I have a feeling he is a Buddhist…The truth underlying this awesome post is not necessarily Mormon; it is taught by all positive faiths: stop worrying about me, me, me and start loving unconditionally. “All the suffering there is in this world arises from wishing ourself to be happy.” – Shantideva, Indian Buddhist scholar
Oh brother. As if only a Mormon could think like this.
Again with the religion!! PEOPLE are good because they want to be.. not because of their religion. Get over yourselves and your “church”.
This IS mormom blog ‘annoyed’ And maybe, mormon people have this believe in their religion that they say that marriage is not about you, maybe they preach it alot, and maybe thats why Jamie thought he was a mormon because he recongizes it. Sorry for my English, I am Dutch.
Thank you for sharing your revelations. You are right on every part. I am truly moved.
very interesting,when I think about marriage I get totally disturbed of fear that the one I call wife might destroy my future. Guys, pray for me so that I can get not the one I love but the one who loves me.Wld also like hear your opinions;I am aged 28 but without a girl friend because the type of girls I like don’t admit my proposal.
Jim Rohn had the best advice when it came to relationships. And it can be applied not just for marriage but for any form of relationship.
“I’ll take care of me for you, and you’ll take care of you for me”.
Why is this important? It is important because way too many people end up in relationships where they feel the need to help the other person. For whatever reason that may be. They literally sacrifice their life trying to solve the other person problems. Trying to change them. I think most of us have gone through such an experience once. It just doesn’t work.
One thing I both agree and disagree on in this article is the saying:
“No, a true marriage (and true love) is never about you. It’s about the person you love—their wants, their needs, their hopes, and their dreams. Selfishness demands, “What’s in it for me?”, while Love asks, “What can I give?”
This statement is true, AND ONLY TRUE, if the other person you are sharing your life with sees, understands and lives by this mantra!
True marriage, or any close relationship for that matter, should never be about you or the other person. It should be about “us”. This falls back on the fact that when you give you also need to recieve in order to be able to continue giving. Having one person giving, while the other recieving, will ultimately lead to exhaustion and emptiness by the person who was always giving. If both individuals in the long haul give and take the same, you will probably have a long-lasting and strong relationship.
For your statement to be 100% true, both individuals need to be of the same awareness to these things. Not just one person.
Nevertheless, I am sure you and your wife have a wonderful life and for that I am happy for you. I am happy to read that you understood this before it got to late. I wish you all the best in the future!
Sasha! I agree. To sumarize and words I live by. “Marriage is what you make of it”.
@Sasha. In the parlance of the wonderful game of baseball, you knocked one out of the park. Great post.
I disagree. In a perfect world, yes it would be true for both people. But it doesn’t make it any less true. It’s still true that marriage wasn’t created for YOU to be happy, whether your significant other agrees or tries, or not. We are called to love and serve our spouse, not dependent on their reaction.
I agree with Sasha…. I was the giver for 25 years of marriage and then my husband ran away leaving me
bankrupt, our dream home repossessed, and my family heartbroken…
“This statement is true, AND ONLY TRUE, if the other person you are sharing your life with sees, understands and lives by this mantra! ”
Yes, this was the missing part of the article I was searching for. Thanks for sharing your opinion on the matter. I definitely agree Sasha.
I disagree. What Sasha describes is conditional love. What Seth encourages us to do is to love UNCONDITIONALLY. The river flows in one direction only, from me to the other person. I don’t expect any of the water to flow upstream back to myself; if I do, I may be hurt and disappointed. It is this expectation that leads to emptiness and exhaustion. I will never be empty, even if I am always giving, as long as I rely on the endless bounty of the Universe to replenish me, like the springs and the rain replenish the river. Loving unconditionally is loving without need or attachment. Like forgiveness, it is a noble art, one that can be learned.
excellent!. ….unconditional love is
described by Sascha also… displayed by TWO individuals, that’s all
I agree with how Jessie summed it up Very well said Jessie- unconditional and what Sasha describes is definitely conditional – conditional on love being returned by the other party.
I have to disagree. True love is unconditional. Most marriages experience one or both spouses turning selfish. Only true love can save the marriage, true unselfishness. If one worries about what they are getting out of the marriage or if the other is doing their part too, then they can quickly lose the desire to keep trying if the other person isn’t doing what they should, (and again, most spouses don’t keep their vows), so such ‘conditional’ love usually leads to resentment, anger and divorce
True love serves the other’s needs & wishes before their own, for a lifetime, even if the other spouse never serves theirs.
He is right, marriage is about our spouse, about their happiness & needs, forgetting ourselves and living for them. Hopefully they will do the same for us, but if not, someday in the eternities they will be greatful we did it for them & they will make it all up to us and the marriage will go on forever.
Christ taught unconditional love, he wasn’t thinking at all about himself when he gave his life for us, he was perfect, he didn’t have to do what he did, but he thought about ‘us’ not himself, even when we didn’t deserve it one bit, and even when most all people of the earth would even reject his great hard earned gift, which would mean he suffered for nothing for them, yet he did it anyway. That’s unconditional love, the only kind that preserves or saves marriages and thus saves our soul.
This reminds me of the movie FIreproof. How far are you willing to go to save your marriage. You hold the power to save your marriage. Even if your spouse walks away and divorces you, Christ says you’re still married, he doesn’t recognize or condone remarriage. So just hang on, stay faithful to your spouse, try to love & serve them if they will let you, and one day they will return & repent in this life or the next and you will have an eternal marriage. Christ’s unconditional love is the only way.
Excellent comment Sasha, and I would like to believe that is what the writer is implying as well. Both parties must have same awareness for his argument to hold water or to be true. Otherwise, you can give all you want but if the other party does not do the same, you will never be happy in that relationship. Sometimes I think some of these relationship/marriage advices are too simplistic for the real world.
I totally agree. You said it exactly right. Both partners have to be on the same page or one ends up taking advantage of the other one and that person sacrifices everything and gets nothing in return.
I see that you seem unable to accept the concept of “unconditional love”. You never will unless you have faith.
I feel the need to interject something I learned after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I learned about cognitive therapy more to the point Albert Ellis REBT rational emotive behavioral therapy. Which teaches to think about your thinking. Nothing or no one makes us happy or unhappy we do it by what we say to ourselves. REBT teaches us to think logically and rationally. When someone or something happens that we don’t like your probably saying something to yourself like “this shouldn’t have happened”, “they mustn’t say that”, or “They have to_____”. These are irrational demands we impose on the world but if you use logic did it happen, then it should have happened that’s logic. You may not have liked it but it happened. When we put demands on the world such as should, must, have to, ought to, need to, and got to, these are irrational and not logical they are limiting no way out but if you change yourself talk to preferences such as, want, wish, prefer, it would be better, or rather, we are not so limited. When we use a preference rather than demand we lower how upset we are because we don’t box our self in. There are two ways people often use the concept of SHOULD; in a MORAL manner and a LOGICAL manner. A moral should implies it is right or wrong. That could be true. But, it also implies that people who don’t do it right are no good including our selves. Where as a logical should is based on cause and effect. When all conditions are met something happens. It does not matter whether it is good or bad, rational or irrational, liked or disliked. It occurs. When we learn to change our should, have to, and must to a preferences we make our self less upset. This just a drop in the bucket of cognitive therapy is about, I hope you can see that we make our self upset or happy and not other people or the world.
Just goggle REBT or cognitive therapy and you will find a wealth of knowledge whether you are religious or not.
Ok, you people just don’t seem to get it. Sasha’s comment is talking about conditional love. However, in the context of a relationship, if only one person is loving unconditionally, giving unconditionally, than that relationship cannot survive for long. We all need love to survive, and Sasha, in my opinion, is not speaking about one person giving their love as long as the other person does the same, he or she is saying that for a marriage, or any relationship to flourish and survive, each person needs to receive love as much as they need to give it and if that doesn’t happen then the relationship can’t survive. So, in order for Seth Smith’s assertion to be true, and it is only true if both parties are operating under the same framework of love. Both he AND his wife both believe and live by that philosophy of marriage being for the other person…otherwise, it doesn’t matter how unconditional his love for his wife is, if hers isn’t the same for him, or vice versa, it won’t work.
After reading all the comments about your post Sasha, I realize the missing piece in the ‘unconditional love’ hypotheses relates to the second commandment: ‘love your neighbor as yourself’. A lopsided partnership where one is doing all the giving and the other all the taking is an example of the giver not loving and respecting themselves. There are many motives for ‘giving’ that are not really loving: giving what one thinks the other wants for the purpose of approval, belonging, acceptance, validation. This type of giving is about oneself really. To truly have the ability to have a loving relationship, one must know how to love. Being able to love and respect ones self is a pre-requisite for knowing how to love another. Buffalo Grass
YES John Patrick.
Sasha, well stated. When you write a lot of checks and the account is never replenished your side of the relationship becomes a lonely black desolate abyss.
John LaFalce,
I disagree. Even if one lowers their expectations for a spouse, if the other spouse doesn’t fulfill their marriages promises and instead abuses, abandons them or has an affair, etc., the innocent spouse is still going to be hurt, no matter how great their self-worth & self respect are. People can make us unhappy by their actions and words, but we still attain a certain level of happiness even so, but not what we could have if our spouse was loving. And we can lessen the pain by seeing life and eternity in a correct manner, realizing that one day they will repent and feel remorse for what they did or said, and do whatever is necessary to make it up to us. That helps us forgive and love them and help them repent even if they aren’t willing to yet.
There is nothing wrong with having ‘should’s’, for God gives us ‘should’s’ and we should expect others to do right, while realizing that they may still not do so in this life and then we have to deal with that the best we can until they repent.
Christ was the wisest therapist.
John Patrick,
I believe that the only way a marriage can survive when one is not loving and serving the other is for the other spouse to show unconditional love anyway, if they stop serving their spouse just because they aren’t being served and loved in return, then that is when there is no hope for the marriage and it will soon end.
True unconditional love is what saves & heals marriages, even if not until the next life, for in this life people have the agency to not keep their vows, but in the next life everyone has to finally repent.
We must have an eternal perspective in order to have true unconditional love, or else we won’t be able to maintain such a love or even see the reasons why.
Though it’s wonderful to receive love from a spouse, it is possible to maintain unconditional love for an unloving spouse your whole life. People can survive without love, if they really set their mind to having true love, though of course it is hard and not fun.
If we just jump out of a marriage when our needs aren’t being fulfilled then we really didn’t have true love in the 1st place. For true love never ends and never gives up, no matter what.
True love has nothing to do with what the other person does or doesn’t do, it is a quality we choose to have & give for a lifetime no matter what the other person does.
But such love is very rare, for hardly anyone even believes in such love today, let alone gives it, especially to a spouse who doesn’t deserve it. Everyone wants true love but few are willing to give it.
Anyone can love a spouse who loves them back, that doesn’t take much effort, but only a rare Christlike person can love a spouse who doesn’t love them back and doing so makes the loving spouse much stronger & better for it.
Concordo 100%, quando li o texto imediatamente pensei que em todos os relacionamentos felizes essa idĂ© ia está presente, quando nĂŁo acaba, amizades acabam todo tempo… Quanto ao amor incondicional eu acredito que as pessoas afirmam conhecerem esse sentimento por acreditarem que o companheiro ou companheira nĂŁo Ă© capaz de fazer algo terrĂvel, ou doença mental no caso das mulheres ou homens que aceitam viver durante anos com um parceiro que os espancam diariamente ou abusam sexualmente de seus filhos. NĂŁo vamos ser hipĂłcritas ao afirmar que ninguĂ©m corre o risco de passar por essas situações, que alguĂ©m conhece o suficiente o companheiro ou companheira para ama-los, a violĂŞncia nesses casos sĂł aparecem depois de casados e ocorre independente de religiĂŁo. Mesmo assim acredito no perdĂŁo, mas nĂŁo acho que Ă© forte e verdadeiro o suficiente para manter uma uniĂŁo nesses casos.
What Sasha said.
THATS ME…..JUST DEAL WITH IT.. 3 YRS LATER ITS TIME………BUT IT HURTS
what Lilly said – Anyone can love a spouse who loves them back, that doesn’t take much effort, but only a rare Christlike person can love a spouse who doesn’t love them back and doing so makes the loving spouse much stronger & better for it …..