Institutionalized
By tracycoyle Posted in Life Issues — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
My family is hard to get involved with. We are not unlikeable, on the contrary, most people will tell you we are a very likable and we friendly bunch. What makes it hard is that we all talk at the same time.
At the family table, us 6 kids would be talking with each other and we would be talking to our parents too. It was nothing to have 4 or 5 conversations going at once. Yes, that means I could be having 2 or 3 going at one time. To most people, the family chat was almost incomprehensible. Spouses would take months, sometimes longer, to learn how to participate fully.
Over time, most of our spouses learned the ins and outs and how to deal with 4 people talking at the same time.
Marriage is like that. You become part of something larger than yourself and it takes time and experience to learn how to cope, then participate, and finally to enjoy it. But you have to want to learn and participate. It is too easy to say that the effort is not worth it, without realizing what you are missing.
Today, a whole new bunch of people are getting married. Most of the people in our community here will try to ignore the event and a few will be openly disgusted. That is ok. I understand. But for most of the people actually getting married...especially those that have been together a long time, the change will be jarring. It has not gone without notice that long time couples that live together then finally get married tend to divorce pretty soon afterwards. That little piece of paper MEANS something.
It means that you have to want to learn and participate. It means you have to put the effort into it, even if you are not sure what will become of it. Getting married and staying married is like playing golf on Sunday with friends and playing golf on Monday against Tiger Woods. You have to focus!
I wish nothing but good to those getting married today. They are going to need all the help they can get, because getting to today was the easy part.