When WordPress featured this blog post, I was intrigued and just had to click on it. Actually, I uncreatively tweaked it, given the non-marital status that I have at this point. The actual post is called ‘We All Married the Wrong Person‘. I have to confess that human relations really fascinate me. Perhaps because I actually enjoy being analytical, at some point in my life I felt like I could ‘figure out’ some people. I was gravely mistaken. I have since come to realise that even psychology, the study of human behaviour, records statistics and come up with a mean of how people will behave under certain circumstances. However there are always the exceptions that bend the rule.
Human behaviour is no rocket science to be figured out. People can change due to their situations, the trauma they go through, the people they socialise with, the type of family background they have…and so much more. See, the variables are quite unnameable and those are all the things that can affect human behaviour. For those of you who are not married and assume you want to, don’t you also try to figure out everything about the person before you say yes?
Recently I met this guy from Germany in church. A bunch of us ended up having supper together after service and coincidentally we got on to the topic of relationships, which excited him and made him talk alot more. He shared that his grandparents came from a small town. They grew up together, went to school together and only had each other all their lives. It is also one of the most beautiful marriages he has ever seen. “We have too many choices these days and that confuses us,” he says. “We think that by having choices, it is a good thing but most of the time we don’t really know what we want nor know what is good for us.” This sentiment is echoed by Dr Haltzman in the article.
This also begs the question if marriage and love are all about us and what satisfy us.
In a world consumed by consumerism and choices, love has become another option. According to Dr Haltzman, we need to say, ‘This is the person I chose, and I need to find a way to develop a sense of closeness with this person for who he or she really is and not how I fantasize them to be.’ I am inclined to that statement. Most of the time, we forget that when we have expectations of a person or keep to a fantasised ideal of a person, we end up treating the person with less love and respect than they deserve.
Perhaps we will all marry the wrong person. That is because we know that humanity is fundamentally flawed. Instead, the thing we can control, and should control instead, is to be the right person to be married to instead of trying all sorts of way to try and change the other.
Maki's Eco Stories 
Thanks so much for sharing my post. It has received such an overwhelming response that I have published an update “More on Marrying the Wrong Person” to keep the discussion going: http://wp.me/pgTZD-v3 I’d love your input.
Peace,
Lori Lowe
http://www.LifeGems4Marriage.com
Lori,
I’d be sure to have a look at that discussion! Thanks for the post. It’s really insightful.
Great article – I think Dr Haltzman has a lot of good advice. I guess his premise, that we all marry the wrong person, gives people a baseline from which they can only move forward and psychologically, this is a positive way to approach things. From personal experience though, it seems rather bleak and perhaps a bit harsh?? I have been married for 17 years and think I definitely married ‘Mr Right’. Haltzman says that couples that remain married don’t describe themselves as completely happy, but rather, committed. This also seems a bit bleak to me. I think you can find and marry someone who is ultimately also your best friend and be completely happy. Of course that means working on being a nice person to be married to, as Haltzman suggests. I think there must be some luck involved as well – i.e. meeting the right person at the right time. Marriage can be a wonderful, rewarding, blissful adventure – even over the long term! Whilst I think this article provides some wonderful, practical advice, it also makes marriage sound like hard work – which is not always the case!!
jmcbrandon, thanks for the alternate viewpoint! It’s funny cos my boyfriend just said that about me the other day – that I take the fun out of relationships when I make it sound like so much work sometimes. Gotta try and stop being the pessimist I am and just enjoy the ride I guess!
I think it’s important to realise that you can’t change the other person- only yourself, as pointed out in the blog, and that our expectations can be too high, but I also think that there is only so much that one person can do in a relationship. Most of the women that I know who have divorced tried for many years to make their relationships work & only gave up after sacrificing their own happiness for a long, long time. We often make the same mistake when we choose the next person because so much of what is going on when you are attracted to someone is subconscious. Until you know someone really well, they largely consist of what you are projecting onto them.
Tanya
Tanya, that’s so true. We tend to see people through our own distorted viewpoint and it takes being open to knowing the person better and continuously doing so that will make the difference.
Ideals vs reality. Theory vs in practice. Ain’t that life..
Hi Enqi, I too clicked on this post from the WordPress homepage out of curiosity. It’s really practical and gave me a different perspective I hadn’t thought of. I definitely over-analyse relationships like you do. It’s so important to accept and appreciate what you have instead of yearning for a choice you might have missed! That German guy is describing simple days where you came across one person and decided they were the one for you. Maybe this decision was based heavily on social expectations but it does sound a lot easier than the present world!
Hey Steph, cool that it got your attention too! It was a pretty catchy title. Sometimes I think choices does 2 things – it gives you perceived freedom and it gets confusing sometimes too when you have too many options. But I do agree that ultimately it should be more of a focus on self-improvement and being the right person than hunting for the right person. Being the right person attracts the right person, perhaps?