THE PRINCIPAL REASONS YOU WILL NOT GET AN APPROPRIATE MARRIAGE PARTNER

The two principal reasons an individual cannot find an appropriate marriage partner. The two reasons overlap.

 

1. In order to meet and date someone it is necessary to go to places where such an encounter is possible. Most important, it is necessary to be optimistic about wanting to meet someone. It is not an embarrassment and does not portray desperation. It is a normal way to feel; and others will understand that feeling and, indeed feel that way themselves. Someone who does not invite interest will seem not to want to meet anyone. It is not possible to be “neutral” and wait for someone, somehow, like the movies, to meet and fall in love on a street corner.

 

Like any other human endeavor, meeting and marrying becomes much more like if someone is pro-active—if that person plainly wants to meet someone and is willing to work at it. The feeling of “That’s just not me evaporates, like any other old ha of mind. Doing something that is anxiety-provoking for any reason loses its ability to intimidate over time.

 

2. Most people regard marriage as liberating, although they may not stop to think of it in just that way. Once someone is married, he/she is free to be with an interesting person practically all the time. They are available to speak and laugh together at all hours. They can have sex without making elaborate preparations. They are free to manage in a world that is largely designed for couples, rather than for single people. They have more economic opportunities because their joint income is more than that of either of them alone. And, above all, they are free to have children.

 

 

Marriage is in a real way liberating. But not everyone sees it that way. For some people, marriage seems as if it will be a constraint. A woman thinks that she will now be subject to the whims and demands of a husband. The men say something similar: “I don’t want to have to answer to someone all the time. I don’t want to ask for permission to buy the car I want or to stay out late with my friends. I don’t want someone making a claim on my hard-earned money. I don’t want someone taking up all of the bed!”

 

If a man or woman thinks of marriage as unpleasant, it will not be possible to find anyone desirable to marry. In short, some people have trouble finding a marriage partner because they find the process of looking or searching uncomfortable, and even demeaning. And others really do not want to get married; they want to maintain a fiction of aspiring to marriage; but it is only a fiction.

 

Not everyone should be married, but I think it is easier for married people to be happy.The two problems described above that prevent marriage are an outgrowth of certain inaccurate ideas some people have developed about themselves and about the world. Often, these misconceptions change in psychotherapy; and, luckily, people do not have to change very much to change their lives. If people can be persuaded not to be proud and not to be fearful, there are plenty of opportunities to find someone to share their lives.

(c) Fredric Neuman


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