This is how your Marriage Ends - Matthew Fray (20 of 2023)

 

'This is how your Marriage Ends ', Matthew Fray begin with a beautiful dedication : 'To my son. Be better than your father. Please work to be what you and your mom deserved from me. Be kind, even when it's hard. Painful things will sometimes happen. For you and those you love. Darkness will occasionally fall because it always does. When that happens, you be the light. ' and 'To his mother. This is - for better or worse, for richer or poorer - for you. Because it can't not be. I'm so sorry.'

Marriage: Trip to Survivor Island.

Overarching premise is that good people who want to be married accidentally hurt one another and  betray each other's trust without either partner being aware of it as it is happening until their marriage slowly becomes toxic and/or ends. 

Divorce: The Great Social crisis of our time. It robs you of your past, and your future, of your hopes and dreams. It is not the end of the world. Can't thank the author enough for this book, cause now we see marriages failing. This is the story of marriage everywhere. Millions of people. Maybe billions.  But it doesn't have to be. 

Good people can be bad at relationships. People with the best intentions in the world can still inadvertently harm their relationship partners. The things that destroy love and marriage often disguise themselves as unimportant. Many dangerous things neither appear nor feel dangerous as they’re happening. When we don’t recognize something as threatening, then we’re not on guard. These tiny wounds start to bleed, and the bleed-out is so gradual that many of us don’t recognize the threat until it’s too late to stop it. Sexual affairs, physical spousal abuse, and gambling away the family savings are major crimes in marriage, but not the only reason to end one. The conditions that end marriage and keep the divorce rate sky-high are the results of unremarkable, everyday behaviours. Behaviours most people perceive to be so ordinary and inconsequential that they don't know to be afraid of them, or to avoid them, how to discuss them effectively, or how to repair the damage caused by them (often because at least one of us spend most of our energy denying anything's wrong in the first place). We often fail to identify the real root causes of our broken relationships, which then dooms us to repeat the same behaviours in future relationships. So mostly second marriages also fail. 

The behaviour is because the person is hurt cause the other is not keeping the promise or word.  If the spouse is perceived to be someone unwilling or unable to keep their promises, then there can't be trust in the relationship. A relationship absent of trust doesn't feel safe because relationships without trust are unsustainable. People require safety. We need safety to function, else we focus time and effort on trying to eliminate the threat or flee to safety. Our failure to recognize conversations about painful betrayals, dooms us to repeating the same arguments and finding ourselves in maddeningly circular conversations over and over again until something breaks painfully enough for us to notice.  

Relationships with people whom we trusted when they promised to love us forever no longer feel trustworthy. It is the erosion and eventual loss of safety and trust that create the conditions for the death of a marriage. 

The relationship become strained but not quickly nor obviously. The strain sneaks in slowly. Quietly. Insidiously. If we recognized what was happening as it was happening, most of us would course-correct, since most of us legitimately love our spouses and want our marriage to succeed. We're not intentionally sabotaging our most important relationships. We are accidentally doing it. Most of us don't even know it's happening as it's happening. As we don't recognize something as threatening, then we're not on guard. We don't make preparations or adjustments to protect ourselves and others from potentially horrible outcomes. 

At hindsight,  both goes through the same feeling and emotion. What is lacking is empathy. Broken relationships are the results of things we do not know. 

Relationship problems are not usually occurring because of bad people doing bad things to the people they love. Relationship problems crop up among perfectly decent and well intentioned people who are  simply living  lives and failing to recognize that others  are experiencing pain while one is  busy feeling comfortable and not paying attention. 

Marriages don't go down in a fiery explosion but from 10,000 paper cuts. Quietly. Slowly. 'I am not trying to hurt my spouse, so my spouse should not get hurt' - This is how marriages end. 

Remember to consider each other in decision making each day, there will be trust and  marriage will go the distance. 

Safety + Belonging + Mattering=Trust

Unintentional pain and unintentional trust betrayals will end your relationship as surely as intentional ones will, only slower. 

Living in a broken marriage or going through divorce is one of the most disruptive and painful experience a person will encounter in their lifetime.  They are the 3rd and 2nd most stressful life events a person can experience, according to psychologists studying the impact of stress on physical health. All are affected by the negative consequences of shitty marriage and divorce. (There is only one perfect child and every mother has it, and a mother is only as happy as her saddest child) . Only the death of a spouse ranks as the first and greatest life stressor. 

People have lavish wedding, with the intention of happily ever after.  

Respect your spouse, be considerate, don’t dismiss their different views. Keep your promises. Don’t go into marriage or cohabitation because you think you are going to get something out of it; that’s taking your spouse for granted. You need to inconvenience yourself some of the time.

Mr Fray says all this in a pithier way. The humour contrasts with the passages describing the devastation he felt at his parents’ divorce and his own.

"The secret for happy marriage is Courtesy. Courtesy keep love fresh and alive. Everything is a relation of cause and effect. Treat all with courtesy and respect." - Earl Nightingale . Respect and appreciation is the key. Make each other feel loved, safe and treat others well. 

My prayer is that either let the concept of marriage become extinct or let those into relationship live happily ever-after.