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How to maintain a successful marriage

Before I met my wife, I was charging a lot less for the boat tours I organize as part of this website. But in a woman’s typical practicality, she convinced me that this was simply not right. And since then she has opened my eyes to many other practicalities and better ways of looking at things. We are now partners in business, her organizing certain tours (such as her marriage proposal tours) and tasks while I’m in charge of others. Her perspective has benefited this business in many unforeseen ways, and now that we have a growing family, I feel that our relationship is an integral part of these operations and why I feel maintaining such a relationship is as important as the smooth running of this operation, for which reason the details of which is worth a mention on these pages. Not to mention that it is humorous, and was instigated by a request from a friend of hers who, after seeing all her happy posts of us, asked for advice how to maintain his relationship.

A woman is not a used car

First of all, you should realise the difference between maintaining a long term relationship and a marriage. The heading title of this section may be coined by Canadian psychologist Jordan Petersen. He argues it is ill advised to live together for a long time when not married, because it can be comfortable and convenient for the male, without any commitment. Like taking her out for a spin and a test drive. In such a situation chances are the male will be reluctant to permanently commit, citing “Why? It’s only a piece of paper.” Wrong, it is much more that. It is a publicly announced and declared commitment; furthermore, essentially a promise to God if committed in a church. However, I know of some cases where two people get along and like each other enough that they have simply decided to stay together forever without any such official commitment.

Raising children is a big responsibility, so don’t be irresponsible

One aspect of providing a good upbringing for a child is to have a happy and solid marriage. Children from a broken family are more likely to be broken themselves, and could have an increased chance of developing a dependence on drugs and going down a bad road in life (you can check out some great interviews with Gabor Maté, or our tips on Raising Little Kaja). Mothers are empathic and nurturing, which is their nature, but in a broken family the mother usually gains possession of the children, who then grow up in a household with a lack of discipline and male guidance. Or under a woman who is frustrated with all the responsibilities she now has to bear on her own and who will have a greater tendency to vent her frustrations out on the child, eventually castrating the poor soul, who now has no father figure for male guidance. Daughters do not require this as much and can come out of it unscathed, but I do not believe it is a healthy environment for a growing male.

So how to keep your marriage solid and happy? My first recommendation is to not idealise a marriage and future family as if it is a golden ticket to happiness. It will take work, both with your relationship and with raising the children (although I should add that I am happier now than when I was single, but that is because our marriage and family works, as will be explained below). I suggest not rushing with many expectations. Like some have said: “The person I married is NOT the person I divorced.” If you feel a need to explore the world before settling down, go for it. But once you are ready to settle down (although you can still travel and explore with a family – it just takes greater responsibility), make sure you are resolute in your decision and ready to take on the task.

Some key foundations of any long term relationship is that you both have enough similar interests and are basically on the same page in a lot of your perspectives and points of view. And hey, never forget, “Girls just wanna have fun”. You can also replace the last letter in that statement with a k. Essentially, if you can give your girl a good laugh and a proper shag, you’re already well on your way. Not like some couples I’ve seen, where the male seems to have perpetual problems with a certain issue and just won’t leave it to rest. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to set your issues aside and invite your girl out for a fancy dinner in a restaurant. Bring her a cheer and a smiling face to smooth over the bumps. I find that arguments can be like a splash of sour milk, and if you let it sit there too long, it builds up into a thick layer, festering resentment and making a reset to neutrality and happy times increasingly more difficult.

Which can increase temptation to the infamous revenge shag. You have unresolved issues in your relationship, you get increasingly frustrated, in which case you vent your frustration by jumping over the fence into supposed greener pasture. A refreshing change from the dreary mundane of resolving issues.

For me, there were certain key issues that I felt were really important in a permanent relationship, which were:

1. I don’t want to send our children to brainwashing institutions, hence homeschooling is a must
2. wife should stay at home and not work somewhere, but can work at home (us being always together also removes any doubt of infidelity)
3. I love traveling

I didn’t want some lazy girl who is content staying at home all the time surfing dumbo fartbook. My future wife seemed hardworking, and when I surreptitiously asked her questions once we started dating, she was fine with all my important points, and since we got along great and had many same interests and passions, I started proposing to her rather early in our relationship. Then again, it might be worth mentioning that I never felt ready until then (while many of my previous girlfriends proposed to me) and I spent 15 years in solitude waiting for “the one” (I grew tired of having girlfriends I knew I did not want to marry but bound in a relationship because I cared for them enough not to jump ship in an instance).

It is important to first find someone with same/similar interests and belief structure. Preferably not someone who just says so because they see you are wealthy and fake it, so surreptitiousness is the key (a secret interview), otherwise you can get entangled into a relationship which starts falling apart once each party slides into their comfort zone and perhaps you realise she does not have quite the same interests afterall, or is not the person you thought they were. However, in such a case it will not be the same as breaking up with a temporary partner, as you could have a child torn between the two of you, who will potentially suffer permanent damage, as well as a long list of other headaches associated with it. Therefore, I would suggest you test the waters thoroughly and only proceed when you feel very certain both of you can commit to the long haul.

In a nutshell, the first priority is to find someone you are sure you will sufficiently get along with until “death do you part”. If perhaps you decide to drift apart after all your children are fully grown, it will be less painful for all, but if you want to keep things together, here are my tips – obviously from a male perspective.

One good book I’ve read was “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” by John Gray, which my mom sent to me because I was having so many problems with my girlfriend at the time and which I was planning to marry. But we simply were not compatible, or she was not the right choice for me, so the book did not apply to our situation. Another option is “Women Are from Bras, Men Are from Penus: A Survival Guide for Bypassing Communication and Getting Even in Your Relationships” by Anna Collins and Elliot Sullivan, which a friend of mine once found in a public garbage, but some of the excerpts he read to us are quite hilarious.

As I previously mentioned, it is important not to have expectations, and to make sure you are compatible on many levels. It is normal that when people first fall in love, they try harder and compromise more, because they pursue success. But once you get into a relationship for a longer time, especially once you get married, it is natural that each party sinks into their own comfort zone and what is natural for them, requiring minimum exertion. Keep this fresh in mind. Did you wine and dine your girlfriend occasionally, make yourself smell nice and so on when you were dating? Then you should continue to make such efforts. Don’t be proud about it but consider your partner’s perspective and how you were both behaving towards each other during your early dating days. Try to keep that alive. As they say in the Philippines, “Happy wife, happy life.” It really shouldn’t be that hard, but if it’s already a major struggle while only dating, you should carefully consider if you really want to move forwards and whether you are both prepared to maintain the same compromises over the long term. The worst mistake is when people expect that, once they sign the marriage certificate, they’ve already done all the hard work and it will just be easy and smooth sailing after that. That is when you start drifting apart.

But hey, people are different, men and women are also fundamentally different, so no matter how compatible you might be, it could be inevitable that you will have some differences and run into some arguments. My wife can be stubborn and stern headed, which I actually prefer as opposed to some fluff who will always agree with everything I say, for which reason we can get into heated arguments. Actually, one psychologist commented that most people prefer a challenge in their relationship. Like agent Smith commented in the Matrix, they tried different experiments, even creating utopia, but found that entire crops failed, so they chose a miserable period like the late 1990s, when things were okay but generally shitty enough that most felt the challenge was sufficient to continue their existence.

These fierce arguments occurred more often in the beginning of our relationship, and the fireworks were certainly explosive, while we sanded down each other’s rough edges and moved towards a more equitable understanding. In all of these fiery moments, I found it better to just leave each others’ presence for a short period, to give each time to cool down and think about what just happened, why it happened, how it can be fixed and so on. If you just escape to some whore bar to complain to a woman how frustrating your wife is to you, it’s not going to be a good recipe for figuring out a solution to any discrepancies. In such moments, while drinking beer after beer as my temper cooled, I found I was able to find a solution. By that time we may have already started texting to each other, and once we got together, when I proposed my idea, she would readily agree, and hence more rough edges were rounded. In this slow manner our arguments became less intense and frequent over time.

For example, one solution was, if our voices started to escalate, instead of the escalation continuing, one of us should raise a finger to say, “Do you hear yourself? Can we time out and think about this instead of escalating further?” Try to calm down the situation, step back each into your own spaces to ponder over the conflict and look for a solution, instead of storming off hot headed on a vindictive streak.

Sometimes the proposed solution might require the other party to compromise or bend a bit. If so, consider this, don’t expect it from them, and perhaps propose a counter compromise. Praying and going to church for advice and support could be another option, but that would be an entirely other discussion.

It is in moments like this that the most damaging words can be said, and people tend to remember traumatic moments more than they do the positive, happy ones. In my quiet moment of reflection I pondered over our argument and came to the following conclusion. Call it a cost/benefit analysis from an anal, computer geek.

1. I love our son and it would eat me from the inside out to leave him, as well as the thought that he will grow up without a father like myself, which I promised myself to never let happen to my eventual offspring.
2. In an overall analysis, I have long ago and many times come to the conclusion that I am happier now than when I was single or with a girlfriend. I felt mature and ready enough to start a family, which I have wanted and dreamt of for a long time, and I want to properly follow through with this “new project”.
3. Women are empathic creatures. Without that empathy we would not survive as a species, because if it was up to men to give carry a baby for nine months, then nurse and raise it for at least four years, while dealing with all that shit wiping, I’m sure most would just throw the fetus by the side of the road and run off to play squash with their friends. Men are hunters, whose role is to bring home the bacon. We work together with our female counterparts as a good team, each with our own strengths. Consider it the genius of nature’s/God’s design. So with that in mind, we as men should make an effort to understand that a female’s occasional emotional outbursts are a consequence of this empathy. It definitely need not follow any rational logic, so best to suggest the conversation terminate and each party go to their own space to cool down and collect their thoughts. But most importantly, as a message to men, by threatening to leave her due to your own impatience, like the fetus left drying in the baking sun by the side of the road, you force her, precisely because of her empathy and instinct to take care of her children, to start looking elsewhere for someone more reliable and stable. And one day you might find yourself like that crying puppy dog, but no amount of tears or flowers or pleads will salvage such a situation. Because females are empathic, once they fall out of love and into love with someone else, it is simply too late and over.

With these points in mind, I came to the conclusion to never make such threats, to consider her natural empathy when these heated discussions occur, and not allow arguments, often over petty points, to lead to potentially permanently damaging words from either party, but to simply step back to cool down and collect our thoughts. So far the dust has always settled after every argument and things returned to their glorious harmony. Harmful words can leave permanent scars, so best avoid them.

On a final note I’d like to mention one poor sod who struggled to the ends of the earth to make each of his first two marriages work, but ended up forking out $130,000 in losses and suffering a lot of frustration. After which he came to the conclusion that his big fault was that he was simply too nice. In a perpetual effort to satisfy every demand of his partner, he created an insatiably starving beast, always complaining about every tripe possible.

“The weather is too hot, the weather is too cold”. Endless, as I’ve occasionally experienced myself. This is how you nurture the eternally unsatisfied woman who will always be glancing over the fence for greener pasture.

Perhaps it is the very core of a female’s nature, in her genetically driven desire to raise children, to always look for the best options. In such cases I believe you need to step up to the bat, as they say, stamp your foot down and show who is the “man of the house”. Otherwise they will just stomp over you and perceive you with disdain for the lack of a real man that you are not. No matter how many flowers you regularly buy them and serve their every need, they will just want more.

Another way we can look at it is to turn to the bible:

Eph 5:22  “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord. … Husbands, love your wives … husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. … Each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

Col 3:18  “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.”

As you can see, this does not condone patriarchal brute behavior by the male, as might often be perceived from these lines. I’m for equal pay, opportunity and respect for women, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the feminist movement has turned into an ungodly poison. In the early period of our relationship, we’d often hold hands when walking somewhere, eager and happy to please each other, and although our rough corners have been sanded down, a shiny and sharp cube seems to have been replaced with a smoother ball with a thin, splotchy layer of sour milk. I’m still happy to please my wife, but she seems to be getting increasingly demanding, irritable, and less willing to please. I suspect it could be because of the shows she watches, which I like to call shitcoms. Gossip sagas filled with cheating and intrigue. I once walked past and overheard “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. Yah, let’s see how these women fair when they need a plumber, firefighter, or heaven forbid, want to raise their own baby. Increasingly I’d hear from her “I want!”, or “I don’t want!” Perhaps in God’s judgment he sees the nature of a woman’s heart and therefore prescribed these rules of conduct, so to speak.

Therefore, to maintain a marriage over the long term, if both parties are as headstrong as we are, a careful balance is necessary. Yes, “happy wife is happy life”, but it shouldn’t all be about making your wife happy, but she should also make efforts to please you. Not antagonizing you when it is not necessary.

A power struggle dance, filled with fireworks and pleasant moments of reconciliation. Call it an art, or maybe it is just smooth sailing for you, but for us, with our headstrong ways, this is our dance.

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