Diamond News
Happily Ever After... And Then?
Is There A Happily Ever After?
Romeo And Juliet.
Wuthering Heights.
love Story.
What do these three popular romances have in common?
Is it that they’re all stories about the defiant power of love in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds?
No, not quite.
Maybe it’s something about the barely-between-the-lines message that a life without love is no life at all?
No, that’s not exactly the direction I’m going either.
Perhaps it has something to do with them all being tragedies and the fact that for some reason the whole “tragic romance” shtick always manages to tug at the old heartstrings?
No.
The common thread shared by these three great titles is this:
Someone always dies before they get to the really tough part, marriage.
What Happens To love And marriage After The curtains Close?
“love: A temporary insanity, curable by marriage.”
-Ambrose Bierce
There’s a veritable plethora of stories, plays, movies and books available to whet your romantic taste buds and give you all manner of ideas, regarding attracting your ideal mate. These stories show you exactly how to treat the love of your life, building up to the apex of absolute blissful romantic fulfillment.
Big deal. Then comes marriage.
love and romance is all very well and good, but marriage requires a slight touch of reality too. This is what the movies don’t tell you. They’re all about the whirlwind of events leading up to the wedding, but that’s where they end. They don’t ever confront the, sometimes difficult, reality of two people living and making a life together.
A relationship might “just happen” as if out of nowhere, but for a good and happy marriage to last, to go from strength to strength, it requires hard work, dedication to overcoming each problem as it arises and the understanding that your partner is not the perfect person.
Keeping The marriage, engagement Or relationship Going
“love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growth. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”
-Mark Twain
romance and passion are easy to keep up with when you’ve only been dating someone for a few months. First of all, you often only see your partner two or three times a week, so the whole “relationship thing” is really more of a part-time extramural activity than a serious commitment. Secondly your partner is pretty easy to surprise and impress with sudden romantic displays. Every line, every trick you’ve used before, in previous relationships can be pulled out again and still be as fresh as ever.
I mean, who really knows, before the opening scenes of act I, how many girls had already fallen for Romeo’s “That which we call a rose..” line?
love is a lot more than giving the right romantic gifts, it’s more than writing a charmingly sweet love letter or perfectly phrasing the right romantic message. love has a lot more substance than that. At least, it’s supposed to, and it’ll have to if there’s any chance of it surviving the pressures of married life.
This is the problem with all the sweet (or tragic) romances we find ourselves attempting to base real-life marriage and relationships on, they give us false expectations. We end up chasing the ideal of ever-lasting romance, thus never experiencing the joy that comes from finding the right person just because the right person might not be Romeo.
So, Is marriage A life Without romance?
No, but it’s sad how many people end up believing that their marriage is nothing more than a binding contract to whose rules they must adhere.
After the reality sets in that marriage is not going to be a lifelong rerun of “When Harry Met Sally” a lot of people sink into disillusioned despair. These people magically jump from believing in the ideal of a perpetual movie-life marriage to believing that marriage is actually a soul-destroying form of torture conceived in the minds of our ancestors as some bizarre form of punishment.
In actuality marriage brings into your life a different type of love and romance to the version hocked off by Hollywood. marriage brings something real and, if approached realistically, something that will continue to reward you for the rest of your life.
The reality is that perpetual passion will eventual wear you out, your partner should, first and foremost, be your best friend, someone you can turn to in times of crisis as well as celebration, someone you can trust. They should not be someone always seeking an only-in-movies romance and nor should you because that is something neither of you will ever be able to provide.