Happily Ever After

September 10, 2015

Movies in the United States and abroad have created ideas about marriage that involve two people "falling in love" and all of their dreams coming true. The story-line is usually a romantic love story with a couple who beats the odds and overcomes the challenges that threaten their relationship. Sometimes in the end, the inseparable couple gets married, and as we all know.. they live happily ever after. But is that what it's like in real life?

Here are some thoughts that run through my mind about life & marriage. It includes ideas that are generally not included in the entertainment industry's portrayal of a perfect marriage:

• Our story did not end after our 'happily ever after' started. We got married on March 5th, 2010 and it was a dream come true for both of us, but it wasn't the end. We had many peak experiences full of excitement & happiness after that, and it was more or less intermixed with just as many 'valleys' (hard times).

• The highlight of our marriage, at least for me, isn't the "falling in love" aspect or all of the dreamy romance filled-type images often displayed on social media or portrayed in romantic love movies. The highlight is getting to know what I misunderstood and misjudged. It's learning and growing, understanding my self more, understanding @emafe more, and understanding the mind, life and reality more. I only came to appreciate and receive these things through trial, error, seeking 'truth' and more or less, marriage.

• In a sense, there is no such thing as a happily after since that would mean that the work in one's marriage was done, but as long as we are not dead, everything we think, do, say and want requires effort and work. Everything is a work in progress and that includes our marriage, so the closest thing to a happily ever after, besides a few moments that feel like a happily ever after, is constant renewal.

• Getting married, living one's dreams, and having beautiful moments will always come with low moments too. Every positive I have experienced in marriage and in life, was eventually offset with an equally negative aspect. For a young adult or teenager, it is not always obvious that our positive experiences will more or less be balanced out with negative experiences, but now that I am 34 years old and have been married for almost 10 years, I'd say that everything gets balanced out eventually - there is no positive and no negative, reality is neutral and it's just our personal biases that are either positive or negative.

So in summary, Hollywood and International Love Movies portray a very positive experience for lovebirds that meet each other, fall in love and finally settle down. But marriage isn't all positive and neither is life. Life and marriage has a positive side, a negative side, and learning from both and evolving is just about as close to reality and a happily every after as one can get.

December 1, 2017