It’s Not Alphabetical, But “Me” Comes Before “Marriage”

There has been quite a bit of discourse over the last few years about the relative happiness and health of people with different relationship statuses.  Much of the popular literature has given the impression that married people are happier; therefore, become married to improve your well-being.  The problem with this position is that they are confusing correlation with causation.  Doesn’t it make more sense that happy people are more likely to get and stay married than a ring possessing magical powers?

Does Marriage Make Us Happy? Should It? | Psychology Today.

Whenever we rely on external sources for our fulfillment, well-being, and happiness, we will ultimately be disappointed.  We have to find those things within ourselves before we can find a partner that can see them too and before we can see them in another.  In order to be the best partner possible, we first must address ourselves:

How can you trust others, if you do not have trust in yourself?

How can you care for others, if you cannot care for yourself?

How can you have faith in others, if you do not have faith in yourself?

How can you be loyal to another, if you cannot be loyal to yourself?

How can you be responsible for another, if you cannot be responsible for yourself?

How can you be with another, if you cannot be with yourself?

How can you love another, if you cannot love yourself?

So, throw away the dictionary, and look to yourself before you look to marriage to make you happy and well.

Thank you for sharing!

3 thoughts on “It’s Not Alphabetical, But “Me” Comes Before “Marriage”

  1. thats true about having to find those things within ourselves before we can find a partner that can see them too and seeing same in another.thatnks for this post

  2. feelingpaint – As odd as it sounds, writing & painting seem to come alive before I understand them. There's a certain permission to letting go of producing something dignified, but once I have crossed that line anyway, the paint wildly hits the fan and the only thing to do is make art with it. I'm not on a self-improvement journey, I'm on a self-discovery journey. And now that I wrote that, I want to delete it because it sounds selfish. Instead of editing it out, it's my gift to you: "I'll scribble first." Art that heals is worth the journey. And no canvas is ever finished anyway. Because life. And life is a good thing, because sometimes the canvas. is. a. mess.
    persuaded2go says:

    Thank you for sharing that…it makes a LOT of sense..! I’m trying to figure out how/why I cheated and the line that struck me was “iv you cant be loyal to yourself”…and I realized a problem I never saw before…! Thank you for sharing…

  3. In my teens & 20s I felt pressured to be married. It did not come from any one person just what I was expected to do. Having had good examples of marriage from parents/grand-parents I saw it as something of value yet at the sametime not something I saw my self capable of doing. So at 30 I set out to cultivate and strengthen the qualities I’d seen in others necessary for a successful marriage. During the third year my future wife noticed me and we married 2 years later. Nine good years of marriage, one not so good. The good stuff found during preparation was not destroyed in the end.

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