Getting Marital Happiness

By

SOLVING MARITAL PROBLEMS

By : Mrs. Abha Sharma, Jyotishacharya,

Senior Researcher, Vedang Jyotish, New Delhi.

 

Note: This article is based on the points noted by Mrs. Abha Sharma, during the guest lecture delivered by Ms. Surabhika Maheshwari, Lecturer (Psychology), University of Delhi, to the Students of Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan 

 

Peace and happiness of minds is a must for nurturing growth and prosperity for any individual. It is thus quite clear that an unhappy married person will have lot of tensions and hence will not be able to take wise decisions in his personal as well as professional life.

 

Good amicable atmosphere at home is created by the happiness of marriage and cold wars betweens married couples give negative vibrations at home. This atmosphere not only hampers the smooth growth of children at home but also makes the concerned married couple feel mentally as well as physically week due to the constant quarrels between them.

 

“All marriages have phases of marital discord called Marital distress”. There is no such marriage where there is never distress”.

 

Understanding Marriage and a marital relationship:

 

Each marriage has three phases of marriage. These are as follows:

 

1. FIRST PHASE is called Honey Moon Period:

This may extend from period of one week to one or two years.
This is the stage of accommodation for each other. Adaptability and resilience is maximum here. Focus is mainly on physical satisfaction and emotional bonding.

 

Here, separation and divorce is mainly on sexual grounds.

 

2. SECOND STAGE is called Family Stage.

This period is from marriage of one/ two years age to fifteen years of marriage.

It is the time when focus of marriage is not on each other but on children, making of family and home requirements.

 

Here, separation and divorce is mainly on ego, financial and other comforts/ pleasures grounds.

 

3. THIRD STAGE is called Spouse Stage and it is the last stage.

When marriage has crossed a period of 15 years, this stage comes.

Again here focus is mainly on spouse, as kids are by now grown up

 

Here, separation and divorce is mainly due to long term incompatibility issues.

 

Depending upon these three stages of marriage, the marital distress is also classified into three stages. These are

 

A---That we cant resolve. Here marriage will break and is doomed to be so.

It occurs in the hopeless marriages which work only when there is some extra-marital affair, interest in each other’s materialistic assets or one is having lot of patience to bear everything wrong done by the other partner in marriage.

 

B---Hopeful Distress: It occurs in phasing out marriages

 

C---Volatile Marriage Distress: Here, there is either extremes of love or hared among the couple. These are most difficult to handle.

 

SEVEN MAIN REASONS OF BREAKUPS IN MARRIAGE:

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  1. Sexual Incompatibility- due to impotency reasons, lesbianism/guy, less desire for sex.

  1. Childlessness

  1. Social Incompatibility- due to status difference, joint family issues, etc.

  1. Expectations Clash –due to two types—

    (a) Different expectations from each other

    (b) Mutually incompatible Expectations

  1. Distancing – This is cropping up as a latest trend due to the following reasons:

                           ---different attitudes ( Positive or negative)

                           ---financial independence ( Both are earning well) 

                           --different office/ working timings (e.g. in Call Center /Corporate culture)

                              ( Only Bond left between the couple is their Child / children)

 

  1. Incompatibility of Dreams, Desires, Morals (e.g.Character, Flirting) and Values ( e.g. lie speaking, believe in bribery)

  1. Inability to resolve a sudden crisis or to live together in that crisis (e.g. a sudden big business loss, death of a child, rape of spouse, etc.)

 

 

A marriage can break suddenly or slowly. The sudden break ups are due to the emotional reasons, in a fit of anger or some sudden incidence in life. But there are also some long term grievances acting behind the sudden outrage / incidence.

 

 

 

A marriage can’t break for any of the seven single reasons. There are at least two or more reasons resulting in breakup of marriage. These may be at three levels

                                                  —Individual level

                                                  ----Inter-personnel Level

                                                  ----Community Level 

 

 Which marriages can’t  be saved or “Not to save the marriages where”

 

  1. Sexual incompatibility is there when marriage is in the “Honey moon “Phase.

  2. Ego Clash due to high mutual expectations in a Nuclear Family and expectations due to surrounding relations ( Mom-in-law Sister-in-law, Brother-in-law) in a Joint Family.

  3. No motivation in both the parties to change themselves to save the marriage as they don’t have any common bonding, e.g. children, Values, Morals, etc.

  4. Only one party shows adjustment and adaptability to save the marriage during first and second stage   i.e. “Honey moon” and “family stage”.

  5. In third & last “spouse phase” of marriage, if one party is adamant to not adjust any more at any cost & is ready to accept living alone after divorce.

  6. Unorthodox Marriage where some facts of life can’t be changed and couple is not ready to live with that fact of life any more ( e,g, Difference in religion, country, caste, etc).

How to ascertain that the marriage can be saved or not:

 

THUMB RULE:

 

If out of the seven reasons of break-ups in marriage, at least / more than four reasons are available, then the efforts to save may be futile.

 

If only three reasons are troubling in the marriage then saving the marriage can be difficult but not impossible. Much efforts need to be done by both parties together with whole hearted motivation.

 

If only one or two reasons of break-up are available, then the marriage can be easily saved by opting measures.

 

SOLUTIONS FOR MARITAL DISTRESS for saving MARRIAGES

 

  1. HEALTHY COMMUNICATION:

--- Stop Unhealthy Communications, like abusing each other / criticizing each other. 

 

--- Wait for next session when your “talk to spouse” time is out as well as situation gets out of control during arguments in fight.

 

---- Try to make a warm communication each day with your Spouse

 

  1. REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS:

---- Don’t expect unrealistic things from your Spouse.

 

-----Don’t pressurize your Spouse to do things unwanted by him / her

 

  1. COMMON GOALS TO ACHIEVE THROUGH MARRIAGE

e. g. Good Upbringing of Children, their education

 

  1. POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS:

----- Began to accept each other

----- Encourage each other for doing so

----- Do “Mantra Jaap” which can remove negative emotions and help in

        improving your mental power and confidence.

----- Doing Pilgrimages together

----- Give some freedom to your spouse

----- Observe transparency in Finance matters

-----  Divide roles in managing Home Finances

           ------  Express yourself and Talk with your Spouse

 

Hence, knowledge of all the information given above can surely help to reduce anybody’s marital life problems and help in reducing the Divorce rate in the World too.

 

Date: 6th July 2008

Place: New Delhi, India

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