During the 30 years now that I have the inmense privilege of knowing Peter Birchwood and be his wife, we have known couples who get married or are in a relationship only to end it all within the seven year itch.
In schools and universities they instruct you in all kinds of subjects but not in the most important of all: How to find the right partner for a long and loving relationship or marriage. It always surprises me that seemingly intelligent people cannot work out what makes a relationship or a marriage tick. It takes more than just a shared interest to glue down a relationship and that is love above all. If that doesn't exist there is nothing to be done. It doesn't matter how many interests you share. The success of a good marriage depends on a mutual life-long project, and see it through to fruition. Having -differences- in interests helps in what the other one lacks, and this way, the couple complement each other. I work on the Spanish and Latin American cases in our company because I speak Spanish and my husband doesn't but he has the necessary expertice and knowledge to solve a case if he understands the problems, so not knowing how to speak Spanish is not an obstacle for him to solve a foreign case. This is our lifetime project now joined by our son who has now come to work with us and our dear co-workers in this project. On the personal side, we do not have very many shared interests, whilst Peter likes golf, I don't, he likes Harry Potter I don't, I like Woody Allen's films, he doesn't. Peter loves car races and I don't but we have found Top Gear and suddenly I now enjoy expensive cars and Jeremy Clarkson is solely responsible for my new developed taste in cars and that when it came to choosing a car I bought a black BMW! before the Top Gear programme, TV motoring was very boring with programmes that would show you how to change some spark plugs and a guy with a bonnet open, really uninteresting stuff, enough to make you yawn. Jeremy Clarkson, the cool James May and the chirpy Richard Hammon have suddenly made motoring exciting, fun and interesting not only for myself but lots of other women too. Thank you guys! I hope to see you in person in your show soon.
Anyway, a basic advice when choosing a partner or husband is to see if your interests or life-style doesn't clash with your own personality. For instance, for a woman, if you HATE parties and late night evenings and entertaing people and would prefer to stay quietly at home every night watching TV. Do not date nor marry a diplomat where there will be endless important social events and late-night evenings. Equally, if you adore dancing the night away till dawn and coming home always late, do not marry a professional foot-baller who has to be early in bed for morning trainings the next day. It is not about shared interests or the lack of them that makes a relationship flounder. Its how your life-style complements each other's personality and tastes. I'm always surprised how seemingly intelligent, university educated people miss on this simple principle. But there you go..
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8 comments:
Well I can only speak as a bystander here, as one who has observed people in lasting marriages.
I think that if people enter marriage expecting the first feelings of "magic" to last, then they'll be disappointed. All that stuff wears off. Hopefully, though, it's followed by something less flashy but deeper. People who leave their partners in order to experience the "magic of dawning love" with someone else are like drug addicts constantly seeking a high.
Another point is that if people embark on marriage or anything else in order to be happy, they're putting the cart before the horse.
I like music, and music makes me happy, but when I put music on it is in order to hear the music, not in order to be happy.
Also I think that if a marriage has trials and tribulations, then that can make it stronger, because people value hard things above easy things.
Well said! Bravo Robert. In tribulations is when the stregth in a relationship is really tested. Once, a friend told me that he went to a wedding in Italy where the priest told the couple, that marriage was tough, not easy and not something to be entering just with a dovey eye but a way of life attached with a serious goal ahead to be developed. The priest said if marriage was all that magical and easy, he would have married himself by now, instead of chosing to be single. He said that those who think marriage was like the fairy tales: "And they lived happily ever after" this is just a myth and should reconsider not entering it.
It sort of reminded me of a film by Cantinflas in 'El Padrecito' in this film, Cantinflas was a priest who was going to marry a couple that he knew were not well suited and that marriage would be a total disaster and it wouldn't last, so during the wedding ceremony he casually asked the bride if she knew how to cook tamales (the groom's favourite dish) and she said: No. The groom was really astonished and he asked her in disbelief why she couldn't cook tamales, she replied because she wouldn't be doing the cooking, he was going to do it for her and to make the story short, the couple started arguing so bitterly about their mutual short-comings, that the ceremony was cancelled!
Another thing I find really tacky are break-up announcements. I mean.. your close friends and relatives would already know about it and strangers could care less!
Only yesterday, I saw one of this tacky break-up announcements that said: "In endings there are new beginnings right? (The guy's name) and I have decided to be just good friends. We have had too much time apart this year and both of us developed interests that the other doesn't share. It's like we just grew apart, its sad but I'm happy that we will be close friends'
Isn't that tacky or what? Are we suppose to congratulate them? I mean.. you announce in public, a wedding or an engagement not a failure in a relationship. But a break-up ? This is another wacky foreign culture! What do they expect to hear from people? Oh my conmmiserations? oh so sad..Its not a funeral after all. Have you ever heard of anything like this Robert? It just seems weird to me.
It's a bit strange, isn't it. The next thing will be an unwedding ceremony, where the bride and groom stand at the altar and the groom takes the ring off the bride's finger and gives it back to the best man. The bride and her father then walk backwards down the aisle until they get outside, where a bridesmaid hurls a bouquet of flowers back at the bride. An unwedding photographer says "Frown please" and takes pictures of everyone looking miserable. They all go off to the unwedding reception where the guests are given their wedding presents back, and then the unhappy couple go off in opposite directions for a lonelymoon vacation in an unromantic location.
Ha,ha,ha,ha.. That is really so very, very funny and I only just saw it today as Peter and I spent a long weekend in London and hadn't been able to check the blog. Quite! how about the invitations for the Unwedding ceremony? I'm surprised the card manufacturers like Halmark's haven't caught up in the new craze. For those who didn't make it to the altar, there could be the un-relationship cards where they announce it to their friends & relatives. 'We failed to gel, the relationship is now over. No one else is involved. New applicants sign here please.' (It would save a bit of time that way), if there is anyone else interested out there. You know.. someone's loss is another person's gain! As Lord Goldsmith once memorably said.. upon making his mistress his wife. 'A new vacancy is now open for that other post! Ha,ha.
Hi Maria
Blimey, well there could be announcements in the teenage magazines, something like "Julie isn't dating Johnny any more since Julie's friends saw Johnny kissing another girl at the party and Julie doesn't want to see Johnny again ever ever ever."
I myself would like to announce that I am not married, on the contrary I know roughly what is going to happen to me from one day to the next, and generally that is so unless a female element intrudes into my life whereupon chaos ensues.
Ehem.. not quite chaos since you speak to me every day and as far as I'm aware I don't create chaos in your life.
Your predictions about the teen-age magazines has already happened with the so called 'celebrities' where they leave their girl-friends or wives behind, just to be photographed kissing another woman somewhere else where they told them they were going to be.
Quite true Maria, there are a few women who don't create chaos.
I just don't understand the cult of celebrity. It exists because people are interested in the rich and the famous, but nine times out of ten there is nothing interesting about these people, except maybe for the one talent they have that made them rich and famous in the first place. And some people become rich and famous without any talent whatsoever, e.g. TV presenters.
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