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ArticlePost -> RE: Would You Remarry Your Ex-Spouse? (7/28/2009 12:58:14 PM)
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Oh my goodness. I hate to be such a stick in the mud here but many of the people leaving posts here should clearly never, ever get married again to anyone. The second you hear someone use terms like "I'm having feelings" and "it might be love this time" and "if we can grow to be soul mates" then you know they are in for yet another major relationship failure. None of these things have much to do with a successful marriage because they are all based on feelings. Now how many times do any of us have to be married and divorced to learn that feelings come and go, emotions are high and low, opinions of our mates are good and aweful, etc. etc.? Go ahead and listen to your wishy-washy feelings, feel good about "the thought" of being in love, get re-married to whoever, and then check off the days until all of those feelings go away or diminish drastically. Then once again blame this diminishment on your spouse not meeting your needs, or you've just grown apart, or he isn't mature enough for marriage, take your pick. Those are all very poor excuses to cover up the glaring fact that most of us (including me) got married for the wrong reasons or better yet, on the wrong foundation. Who doesn't enjoy the thrill of a new love, or rekindling an old love? We all do. We wouldn't be human if we didn't. BUT see it for what it is...a thrill. Something that can't and won't last for very long. Feelings are the worst indicator of who you should marry or re-marry. Don't waste your life on yet another failed marriage and expect anyone to think you are so naive that you don't know what the real problem is....YOU! You are the common denominator just as much as your former spouses when it comes to a failed marriage. Ladies, time to pull your heads out of your double-standard you know whats and own up to the fact that many of you are TOO mature for marriage. Your expectations (both spoken and unspoken) are way too high for most mortal men to live up to. Still worse, the resentment you allow yourselves to harbor when you finally decide to diminish your expectations in order to cope with your lazy, detached, un-emotional husbands will kill a marriage faster and more surely than infidelity. I hear way too many women complain about how their man didn't turn out to be the kind of husband they thought he would (or should) be. And this even after years of manipulation, near constant nagging, and just about anything else you can think of to MAKE your man the way you want him to be. And then you have the nerve to be upset when you realize you aren't the change agent you thought you were when you first met him. This frustration leads to some bizarre logic that makes your individual happiness more important than your vows, your husband, your kids, and all of that history the two of you spent years building together. Your precious little happiness then becomes the fuel for both emotional and physical affairs with other men, or perhaps other women. And this is supposed to be the man's fault. Right! Men, were aren't any better, and in many ways worse. Why in the world do most of us get married...for sex? For someone to take care of all those pesky domestic things we don't care for? Oh, we get caught up in the feelings as well. Men fall in to the same trap as women when it comes to being in love with the idea of being in love. We just don't often follow through with what it means to really be in love. IT IS NOT A FEELING!!! Love is commitment, love is intentionality, love is action, love is sacrifice. Most of those things rarely feel good and can be downright boring, but like it or not, that's what it is. Men want to retreat in marriage, to escape from as much stress and responsiblity as possible. Why then do we marry women? Sure we want companionship, we want to know the pride of walking in the park with the most special person in the world, all of that. But that's not why you get married. When you dated your wife, did you ask yourself what it would be like to be married to her if she gets in a serious car accident and can't walk anymore? What will she be like with cancer or some other dreaded disease? What about when she spirals into major depression at the loss of a child? Any of that pop into your horny minds before you so romantically espoused your love for her on one knee? No! And it didn't pop into my mind either...but it should have. That's what you need to be thinking about and dealing with if you really intend to get married again to a new and shiny mate or re-married to whichever former spouse you happen to fancy at the moment. For all of you feeling addicts, please don't get married again to anyone. Forget the old adage to try and try again, if you first don't succeed. That isn't a good motto in the marriage department. It cheapens those marriages that really are working and will survive the test of time. Someone used the word "risk" here and that is the best word feeling junkies should paste on their foreheads and see in the mirror every morning. Marriage is loaded with risk because you never really know what he or she will do tomorrow, let alone in 20 years. You have worse odds of making your fourth and fifth marriage work than a heroine addict has contracting HIV from a shared needle. So just don't do it anymore. Date, make new friends, get a hobby, help people in need, learn to cook, fly a kite, just don't keep getting re-married. Your happiness isn't waiting for you in a marriage! Build a bridge and get over it!!!
CB
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