One of the most common questions I hear as a marriage therapist is ‘should we be together?’ I think this is a very normal and healthy question to ask, especially when I also do weddings and see couples who are in dreamland: (dreamland couple) “We’re so happy! We’re so perfect together. We never fight and our house is filled with mice that clean our house like in Cinderella.” It’s been found that love can have the same effect as cocaine on the brain, and some of the couples I see for weddings are stoned hard. Reality is eventually going to hit them like a falling anvil… can you tell I’ve been watching cartoons? At some point everyone needs to check should we be together or are we just two decent people? To be clear, I believe when you get married you are making a declaration where you are saying yes to this question. You may have more ‘for worse’ moments than ‘for better’, but you’ve made a vow to work at being together through the good and the bad. To me a promise should be kept, especially one that costs thousands of dollars and involves a lot of your family and friends. You may not be “happy”, but the odds are you wouldn’t be any happier if you had been single. Happy people find ways to be happy whether they’re single or in a relationship. Unhappy people are the same, but they find a reason to be unhappy.
If you’re not married, however, you should be addressing this question and the sooner the better because why waste time. As someone who’s been in a relationship for 8 years, both my fiancé and I have asked this question many times and now that we’re engaged we’ll be asking it again. The following are five tips to help better answer this question: Should we be together? Three of these questions are more about what you will do because love is something we give to others as well as receive. I should also point out that I could write a small book to explain these questions, but I think you’re smart enough to understand them… you’re welcome.
- Do we have enough important things in common to make this worthwhile (e.g. faith, ethics, passions, hatred for country music, etc.)?
- Will you accept the good and bad the other offers (i.e. no jealousy, no resentments, strive to forgive and reconcile, change where you should, etc.)
- Will you strive to accommodate both your needs?
- Will you strive to appreciate the other?
- Will your partner do the same for you?
Marriage can feel like a blessing or a curse. Sometimes how it feels can be out of our hands because we can’t Jedi mind control our spouse, but that just means we need to make sure we choose the right person to marry, and we’re doing what we can to make the marriage as much of a blessing as possible. May these questions help you in your decision.
Rev. Chad David, www.ChadDavid.ca, Learn to Love Dumb People