Most young girls dream of becoming a bride. Fairytales like Cinderella set the precedent for marriage. We all want to find the perfect partner who will meet all of our needs and live happily ever after together. Just about everyone believes the myth of the perfect marriage since between seventy and ninety percent of the population will be married; yet, over half of all marriages in the U.S will end in divorce. So, what are we doing wrong? Why can’t we make the happily ever after fantasy a reality? Arizona State University sociologist Mary Laner thinks that it’s because we expect too much from our marriage. We expect marriage to solve all of our problems and meet all of our needs. We want to find a partner who will do it all: take care of the children, cook amazing meals, pursue a professional career while letting us pursue ours, and be a friend, confidante, and lover. This leaves one person with an impossible volume of needs to fulfill. When we realize that our partner cannot possibly live up to our ideals of the perfect mate, we become angry at the other person and may leave the marriage. These expectations could be a result of feeling alone in our individualistic society. Since we feel depersonalized in many superficial interactions with others in many places, we long for very close and intimate primary relationships. It’s common to expect a lot out of these relationships because we see them as few and far between; yet, in doing so we set ourselves up for the disappointment of finding out that one person can’t fulfill all of our needs or be the perfect person that we expect them to be. The key to a happy and long lasting marriage may be accepting that marriage is never going to be everything that we think it will be like in fairytales.
Written by Lisa Drake
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2012/the-myth-of-the-perfect-marriage/
No comments:
Post a Comment