Hana' Fedora

Marriage

While I was browsing around the other day, I stopped to one blog that had me glued to read one after the other of her entries. She was telling people about each and every minute of her miserable life how her husband betrayed and cheated on her for another sad older women. This was not a blog for the kids I tell you. My god there were swearing everywhere. Judging from it, her marriage life has failure written all over her. She blame her husband for the divorce and she was not strong enough to sustain

her patient and maturity until she had done something that send shame to her husband only life horribly. She claim that he deserve it.

Ideally, when some of us encounter a headline in a news or in a magazine that read something like "How to survive long marriage" most of us would have guess is it really read, "Love and happiness for years to come" or "The secret to successful marriage".

Funny how that works, your brain reads one thing, your mind takes in another. Like how Obama wins South Carolina and suddenly he's winning the race.

Reading the person blog really had me thinking. According to a person that have been married for 17 years said that what lasted a long marriage or relationship is actually survival, most of the time, rather than success. Success, personally, is about trofi, winning and an achievement that has a beginning and an end.

Unlike the war in Iraq, with a questionable beginning and no end in sight.

They see it more as survival. They've survived each other. They have managed to love each other even though every illusion has been stripped away.

Actually, continues to be stripped away.

Because while there is a beginning, there is no end. They continue to grow, evolve, at different rates. Core issues- the ones that start to harden after the first six months of being together- take the form of dirty socks on the floor or dishes left in the sink.

But when their ages increases and maturity takes over, they learn to accept, they learn to not pointing fingers and compromising, they learn to take turn in responsibility and that quarreling and swearing is not the answer but more of a communication and discussion. Trust is out of the question here because trust is suppose to be part of them when they first agreed to be married to each other.

Few months back we had a chance to meet with my father mum living in Scotland with her children all grown up and even grandchildren. She was old and so is her husband Jim. We ask Jim

"How long have you been married? He gave a big smile and show his full palm to us while saying, "50 years, can you imagine that".

"How did you do it Jim? He gave a pregnant pause and gave one answer

"patient"