ONLY GET MARRIED WHEN YOU TRULY FEEL READY FOR HAPPINESS

After the beautiful and serene autumn days, Melbourne has finally entered the winter season with chilling gusts of wind that make one’s fingertips go numb. The heaters and thick winter clothes have been used more often.  The change of season is also a busy time for me as I am welcoming my sister and my beloved niece and nephew to come visit after a long time. After those exciting moments with my loved ones, as usual, I will spend time on emails from my readers or clients that were sent to our Truly Inspired inbox.

Tonight, after a “challenging” day tending to the children at home, while my husband attends to putting them to bed, I prepare a warm cup of tea to unwind and find solace. I settle comfortably in my familiar work chair and proceed to open the first email that appears on my screen.

The email is a gentle story being told through the true-born lines of a Vietnamese reader. She shared about herself that the greatest gift for her after a journey full of unforgettable experiences with a marriage that started at 24 and ended at 28 was her 3-year-old handsome son.

The long email has two details that caught my attention the most, first was the image of her at the age of 20, who was going to a Temple every day to do meritorious deeds and charity work in exchange for prayings that the superiors would let her marry her same-age lover, whom she had dated for more than 3 years. Then, the second was the image of her immersing into depression because she did not understand what love is, what marriage is and could not find out what she did wrong to receive such a broken marriage.

Although her writing was generally lighthearted, as she was somewhat more emotionally stable after a year of divorce, flickering in it, I could still feel a deeply hurt soul lying under those gentle and peaceful words.
I know that, in our society, cases that are similar to the story that I just shared are not rare. However, the common point of these cases is the both physical and mental loss that the insiders have to suffer. Some people even lost their lives after their marriage broke up.

Dear friend, getting married and then being divorced is not a big deal. The problem here is “What have we done to have such a failed marriage?”

When I was a child, I used to hear adults in my family say something like this: “Marriage is a place where the outsider wants to enter, and the insider wants to get out”. At that time, I was not experienced enough to fully understand the meaning of that sentence. Nonetheless, soon after, when I experienced a failure in my previous marriage, I began to understand the meaning of the sentence deeper and better. However, when I started a new life with my current husband, I truly stopped completely agreeing with that opinion.

That is because, for me, this restarting is the time when I have truly become ready and felt happy. That is why I decided to get married. It was not because of the immaturity of my youth, it was not because of my parents’ pushing, or because of society’s and relatives’ judgments about me being single for too long. It was not even because of my age, because of the fear of being alone until the end of life, or because of me seeing my friends, brothers, and sisters have all found a safe place, a family full of peaceful laughter.

I got married because I felt happy and was ready to welcome a new life with great experiences. Then, when this marriage comes, it does not seem to be quiet and peaceful like the way others see it, nor does it feel like “insiders would want to leave” like the quote above. We certainly have had a few ups and downs. However, we still decided to hold hands and continue on the next journey together. That is because we get married when we have found our peaceful safe spot in our partner, the place that makes us happy, the place where we are ready to share every perspective, whether it is the same or controversial. At the same time, we are well aware of the difference in the concept between love and marriage. It is because if we fall in love and love someone too much, we could lose ourselves in just a few moments; and if you step into a marriage when you were not truly ready to shoulder all the burden, you may forget and risk your whole life for someone else.

Therefore, my dear friend,
The moment when both partners are mentally ready, stable, and truly happy with each other is the most suitable time for us to make our decision about getting married.

There are many marriages out there that are built from the foundation of both having stable finances, or both reaching the age where they are supposed to be married already. Or there are even many marriages that occurred just because they saw everyone surrounding all life as couples, having happy children, while they were still single. Then when someone comes into their life, they rush into marriage, thinking it is truly a God-given destiny. However, in the end, there are always people who eventually divorced because of that.

There would be no definite standard for love or deadlines for getting married. It is all because we have labelled and applied our old-fashion social prejudices from many generations before to our life. If we are still single in our 30s, it is still possible for us to get married in our 40s. No rushing, no delaying, what you need to do is wait for a suitable time because when entering marriage, we will share a few decades of our life with a stranger if we rush the process, we would surely fail, otherwise, we would also embrace our sufferings and resentments. Then what is the point of getting married, right?

Marriage registration paperwork can only prove that you are no longer single to the law and society. It is not proof that you are happy with your love life. Marriage is not a gamble that depends on external factors because after you lose a round, it will take you a lot more effort to be able to start another new round.

Therefore, if marriage is something very important to you, then you should patiently wait for the right person, the right happiness that suits you. Moreover, escalating to marriage is for both partners to enjoy the same happiness, support, and joy, not just to satisfy one’s feeling of selfishness that is reserved for the other. To sum up, it is necessary to stay calm so we would not be entangled by anyone’s thoughts or words about our marriage.

Just like the girl in the story I shared at the beginning, just because she wanted to love and live with her boyfriend, she did good deeds every single day just to pray for the sake of marrying that person. Having no plans for the future, nor does she have any solid financial backbone. It was just at that time, she fell in love and thought that she needed to get married at the age of 24 because if she waited too long, she would lose her youth. However, then, you see, her youth was exchanged for a shattered marriage and many wounds that she had tried her best to find a way of achieving before.

In conclusion, starting from a mentally stable initial point, feeling ready to live happily for yourself and your partner, will help your marriage last longer than factors such as timing or material things. Only get married when you are truly ready, friends!

Much love,
Truly Inspired®