I saw a tweet on Twitter that said, “Don’t get married because everyone else is getting married and you felt ‘left behind’ or ‘pressure’ from everyone around you. Get married when you are fully ready with ALL the responsibilities and know to handle such situations with maturity.”
That tweet was a RT from Syafiq Kyle’s video on Twitter where it was a snippet from a Malaysian drama where two couples were arguing and shouting at each other till things are thrown around the house. I felt like everyone who is married will at least have one big argument like that no matter how maturely you’ve handled things before. There will come a time where things get out of hand and that happens.
Before marriage, you both don’t have to spend 24/7 with them. You don’t come home to same house. You don’t sleep in the same bed, you don’t have to share responsibilities. You don’t want to meet for a few days because you want space? Ok. You don’t want to talk to me? Ok. Before marriage, we talk things out, we go out monthly and ‘review’ our relationship- what we did right, wrong, how to improve on it.
After marriage, it’s a different ballgame and I wish people would stop portraying how ‘perfect’ one marriage is. First few years of marriage is so difficult. I’m going to be real, I have had arguments like that with Zur. I throw things around the house, I slammed the door, we shout at each other faces out of anger. (Of course, now things have simmered and we moved past this phase.)
And if people know Zur in person, he’s the most patient, soft-spoken person ever. But sometimes we burn out and we don’t even know it until we burst. We know the importance of keeping ourselves in check but at the end of the day, we’re not perfect humans and things don’t happen the way we want it to.
During an outburst, both of us are trying to get our points across. Both of us feel a certain way about some things. As long as you’re willing to talk, just talk. At some point, we’ll be too tired to continue to argue and just want to come to an agreement and understanding. Understand why the outburst happened. How to avoid it from happening again. Hug each other. Kiss each other. Have sex with each other. Make up for it. Work things out.
At 21 when I got married, I know marriage won’t be easy and I was ready to face it head on. I was prepared for big arguments, disagreements because I, myself have seen how big these arguments can be between my brother and his wife at 15-16 years old. I was prepared to put my ego down and learn to compromise and try my best to see from my partner’s POV. I also kept in mind that arguments (one that doesn’t someone to be a physical punching bag) are healthy in a relationship.
Zur and I have a lot of work to do and as tough as it is, I want to do this with him. I chose to be with this person from the get-go and I will keep choosing this person every single day. If I want to pick different ones each day, I wouldn’t bother going this far and live the single-mingle life since 20 years old.
Of course, there are limits and lines that should not be crossed. And if they do, a foot needs to be put down and the marriage must end. Which hopefully, doesn’t happen. Nobody wants it to happen and if it does happen, one must know that it is a choice and not a mistake.
We all make mistakes. Maybe we didn’t pay more attention to our partner like we did to our phones, maybe we didn’t help out around the house more, maybe we weren’t able to see our partners’ POV, maybe we’re too caught with work and hobbies that we didn’t take our partner’s thoughts and feelings into consideration.
There are good days. There’s always going to be a lot more good days and I’m grateful. And if there are bad days, we would hold hands, we tell each other what we’re unhappy about. Sometimes we forget that we’re in the same team. I don’t think anyone who is married will do things that hurts their partner on purpose. We just want our thoughts to be understood.
I’ve rambled enough for tonight, I think. It’s been awhile since I came on here and typed this much past midnight. Lol, goodnight everyone and be kind.
