Six Years of Marriage
I got married today six years ago. We only got to know each other shortly before taking that decision. But after several meetups, family visits, a lot of prays, a strong faith that made us believe we mean to be together, then it happened.
It was quiet early evening in my then future wife family house where we held the family only ceremony wedding. We decided to postpone the bigger reception in the following months because I had to move to Singapore for my new job. What I could remember was that we did the ceremony and asking bless from our parents and then enjoying the warm of the family gathering. It was very amazing, because not more than 6 months before then, we didn't know each other at all.
After the wedding, we moved together to Singapore for a shortwhile. It was only for a month, because after that wifey needed to commence her post graduate study in Germany. After she flew to Europe, we were in a long distance relationship for 2 years with occasional reunion here and there every couple of months.
Trust me, having long distance relationship is very painful, although nowadays the distance barrier can be reduced with all those fancy technologies such as long distance phone call, video call or cheap chat message. I offer my full respect for couple who have to do long distance relationship because of job or personal constraint.
Two long years later, we finally reunited again permanently. We celebrated that by having a month Euro trip visiting many countries that I always want to go. Then only after that we returned to Singapore to really experience normal marriage life by living in one roof.
The next logical step of every marriage is to get some offsprings. We never really had any birth control program. But it just didn't happen, maybe we assume because we rarely together. So as we started live together, we decided to have kids. But, it didn't happen as easy as we thought.
Long story short, only couple of years later God granted our wishes. The journey there also was not easy because we had to pass an experience we never expect before. But anyway, today in our 6 years of marriage, we are waiting our first kid that due to born early next year.
So what are lessons learned from those 6 years?
Human cannot live happily alone
This might be become a philosopical debate. I am not saying non married people will never ever be happy, because again happiness standard are very not exact. But the point is, as you grow old and do not live with your parent anymore, you will need someone to accompony you in your life. Someone to have a meal with, someone you can tell a story, someone that will take care you when you sick or someone that you need to take care when he/she sick, someone to accompany you for an amazing travel, someone to see you grow, someone to be partner with to nurture future generations and so on. You can't do that alone. And although you can do that without getting marriage, with a friend, with your brother, ultimately I still would rather to follow formal marriage institution.
Conflict is inevitable
There are two humans in the household and together almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and for the whole years to come. Sometime there will be a friction because big reasons or small reasons. Most the problem can be resolved using simple communication after a cooling down period. But if conflict is getting bigger than what that method can solve, the next question that needs to ask is whether you married with a right person? I feel grateful that until now and hopefully forever, I can answer yes that last question.
Finding The Right Person
This is to answer the question in previous section. I will not offer any tips because to be honest, how to find a right person is not a question that very easy to answer. Answer where I end up right now is more combination of faith, magic and luck.
In my religious believe, before human born to the world, God has matched him/her with his or her spouse. So human that got married but then divorced most likely is caused by he met the wrong person he/she doesn't mean to be. Then human that never got marriage maybe just missed the encounter, maybe because putting to high standard, too shy, unclucky or some other reasons.
From what I have learned so far, human is like a mirror. They will feel comfortable with somebody that similar to them. Hence, the quality of your future destiny, can be forecasted by seeing your own personal quality. If you want to be together with an inteligent spouse, then you also need to be smart. When you want to have humorous wife, then you also want to learn how to be funny. And so on.
Marriage might become dry
In the early days of getting to know each other, man often tries to impress his girlfriend, he will do every good things he could. Giving a sweet surprises, talks nice, gentle and all of those good qualities. But after entering a marriage, sometime people start taking things for granted. Human doesn't like monotony.
I don't want to sound like a marriage counselor, but as I understand from what I have learnt so far, marriage needs a periodic maintenance and if it is not being done, there will be a risk it can fail although it started sweetly.
Our attempt to maintain it so far is by doing many things we like together. For example we like to travel and traveling with your spouse is a very wonderful things to do in life. My other personal approach is by remembering how often my spouse always try to take care me and support me when I feel so low.
Keep Learning
There is no school of how to have an awesome marriage life. There are many psychology books you can red for a start. You can learn also from family close to you, your own parent, your uncle, your grandma. If they are having a good marriage, then learn the positive. If they are unfortunate of not having a good marriage, you can learn the negative and study how to avoid that.
Marriage also not only about spouse. It will also be about children. As no school for marriage, there is no school for raising children. One thing that make me excited is waiting to see how a human being can growth from cells to a baby form biologically and then born to the world without knowing anything but in couple of years they can start speak, walk and couple years more they can become almost anything, scientist, writer, entrepreneur, a president or anything great.
As a closing statement, it has been only six years. For human age, it is an age where the kid even still couldn't enter a primary school. It is still a young age. Many challenges still waiting ahead. There still be combination of happiness and possibily sad, annoying, angering experiences that will wait ahead. But this is life, you learn from good and bad also happy and sad. Those are experiences that shapes so that we can get better as the time goes on.