Are You The One?
Why do people marry the person they do and why do people marry? There are many answers to this question. The answer I would like to focus on is one that’s not unusual to hear in the privacy of the counselling room. That answer is; “Because I THOUGHT I was in love”.
A recent survey backs up academic research conducted over many years that many of us marry the person we are NOT in love with. I’m a little suspicious of ‘pop’ surveys particularly those involving very personal questions. In the latest survey about regrets about who you married, I wonder if the people questioned were alone or with their partner when they answered the question(s). 
If you married your ‘soul mate’ may I offer my heartfelt congratulations and may you continue to have a long and loving relationship. However, there are a significant number of people who didn’t marry their soul mate for a variety of reasons, and settled for ‘second best’.
Often, in my experience, those that married for the ‘wrong’ reason do love their partner, but they, as they describe it to me, are not ‘IN’ love with their partner. They look back, nostalgically, at the ‘true’ love they lost.
The statistics show us that in the UK and US 50% of marriages end in divorce. When we at Relationships Ireland speak to individuals whose relationship has ended there is regret at this loss but they also regret that they didn’t, for whatever reason, marry the person they truly loved. Of course they imagine that if they did marry their true love it would have been perfect. This poignant scenario is often the subject of books, poems, songs (Even Now by Barry Manilow) and films (The final scene from Casablanca) for example.
We assume people marry because they are ‘in love’. The very interesting question to ask is, ‘Why did you marry who you did, and why now’? I list a few of the reasons people give (in private) why they married, “To escape my family, It’s the next step at my age, I want a baby, to fix/save him, to legitimise sex, to avoid being alone. ” There are many other reasons people give.
When things go wrong many think back to their ‘real’ love and how things would have been so much better if they had married him/her. Many people live with this ‘ache’ and soldier on wishing they could turn the clock back. When couples or individuals attend complaining of a lack of connection or intimacy, physical or emotional, there is a complex matrix of emotions at play. Rarely will all those emotions or feelings be shared, despite the best efforts of the therapist, for fear of the consequences that may follow when they get home.
We look at photographs (when nobody else is around) and remember and sometimes wish we could relive those times again, or change them. This isn’t just sentimental tosh as some refer to these musings. Many people keep secret love letters or photographs. These memories, letters or photographs are intensely personal and can often be the unspoken emotional or sexual block in a relationship. There will be a mixture of smiles and tears, and regret in these memories, letters and photographs. Somehow we have to live with these feelings, and how to do so brings people to the counselling room, usually on their own.
When things go wrong some of us say in the middle of an argument (and later regret);”I wish I had married someone else.” We try to row back on this statement, but alas, the damage has already been done. We may finally be saying something we have felt for many years. The person that hears these fateful words is now devastated. But deep down, maybe, they already know that their partner really did want someone else and they were second best. So when we look at statistics and surveys on relationships we need to look behind the results and in this instance examine the questions, and how and where they were asked. It is also important to examine what question WASN’T asked. For example who did you really want to marry?