Killing Your Marriage

(Image "American Gothic" by Grant Wood. Oil on beaverboard, 74.3 x 62.4 cm, Friends of American Art Collection, 1930.934 All rights reserved by The Art Institute of Chicago and VAGA, New York, NY)

I’ve been married once before. I didn’t know what killed my marriage until I tried getting married again. In the Catholic Church, you can’t get married a second time until you've had your first marriage declared null. It’s a fallacy that Catholics don’t believe in divorce. You need your civil divorce complete before you can start on your annulment. It’s a long process. You have to prove that there were reasons that the marriage did not exist. That’s a hard pill to swallow after you made a commitment in front of friends, family, and God that you would be with this person until you die—no matter what. Once I started the process I quickly realized I married the wrong person. I was married 13 years, ten months and six days. Maybe I can save you some time. I killed my marriage before it started.

My grandfather was in the tree nursery business. He used to say that no living thing wants to die. You’ve got to kill it. The best way to kill a tree is to plant it in clay. It wants good soil and fresh water. Most first time landscapers have dead trees in their lawn and have to start over. They’re not bad people. They just got into something with a lack of knowledge. No one showed them how to do it right. You readers are so lucky today. So look at what I've written below as good potting soil for your life.

Here are the three things you need in order to have a successful marriage:

1. Self Reliance
2. Shared Values
3. Loyalty to the Marriage
   

Self Reliance. The reason why I put this first is this is counter-intuitive to people in love. You want to take care of the other person. You want to make someone else better. A nurse wants to take care of her patient. The poison you want to avoid is getting stuck with a needy individual. He or she will suck the life out of you. If they can’t manage their money, their drinking, their job, saying out of jail, and so on, you will go down the tubes with them. I read about women who are pen-pals with prison inmates, and falling in love with them—dumb, dumb, dumb.

Shared Values. When I used to go to the bar with my drinking buddies, I was there to have a good time. Meeting somone new in a bar might be fun the first couple times, but that’s no way to pick up your future spouse. Strangers you meet in bars tend to drink and smoke. Is that what you want in your home every day? If you believe in God, you need to go to church and participate in volunteer activities that you like. Or you need to get active in community causes that are interesting to you. Or take up hobbies that are healthy for you, such as weightlifting or bird watching. Your future spouse will tend to show up. Even Bonnie and Clyde had shared values. They didn’t live long, but they had shared interests to their dying day. When I hear that a couple is celebrating 50 years together, it was either heaven or hell. It’s whatever they shared.

Loyalty to the Marriage. I don’t mean putting the other person’s interests above yourself to your own detriment. That’s subservience. You want to give to each other. You need to put the marriage with your spouse above yourself and other people, including your children, hobbies and even your work. If you and your spouse don’t have a good marriage, the children won’t have the benefit of both parents for very long. You might have to turn down a promotion, if it’s going to take you away from your family. You might have to give up skydiving. If you place an outside person or activity above your relationship your spouse, that’s infidelity. If you have an addiction, don't get married.

You might have a lot of problems that you need to take care of first. It’s better to be lonely for now, than to be miserable for years. Been there, done that.