Five myths about good marriages

Many soon-to-be married and newlywed couples have that one married couple they admire and look up to.

Looking in from the outside, the model couple seems to have the happiest and most successful relationship and the newly married dream of having a union as perfect as the one they see on display. However, oftentimes, their marriages don’t turn out to be perfect and they wonder where they went wrong. What they don’t realise is that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage; even good marriages have their challenges. Here are some myths about good marriage that you should discard:

1. Good marriages are perfect: False.

The truth is that marriage is made of two imperfect individuals who are bound to collide. And according to Nairobi-based psychologist, Chris Hart, it is only partners who quickly learn to cope with each other’s foibles, who survive. He says: “When you are single, it is easy to believe that you are a really good person to live with, so when things go wrong, you are likely to blame your partner and ignore your own faults, thus undermining your union.” However, if you go into marriage with the full knowledge that you are imperfect just as your partner is imperfect, you won’t feel as if your marriage falls short just because it is not “perfect.”

2. Kids are the measure of a good marriage:

Kids are considered as one of the pillars of a complete marriage and without them, couples soon start feeling the pressure from their friends and family to bring forth offspring. When couples to not bear children within a certain timeframe, they may feel as if they don’t make the cut for a good marriage.

However, Patrick Musau, a psychologist, warns against using kids to measure the success of your marriage. “No one should decide when or whether you will have kids. In fact there are couples who choose not to have kids and still go on to enjoy fulfillment in marriage,” he says. In any case, as Keith Miller, the author of Love Under Repair: How to Survive Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy observes, the presence of kids may expose or trigger hidden fault lines which may produce catastrophic conflict.

3. Marriages succeed only if the woman has a lower status than her husband:

A wife being more educated, earning more money or being better than her husband in some way, doesn’t mean that the marriage won’t work. What matters is that the couple works as a team and taps into each of their strengths for the good of their marriage.

4. If you are not soulmates, it just won’t work: 

The soul mate myth has been perpetrated for so long, it has come to be taken as truth. However, as Jazmin Moral, an author, says “Things do not happen magically in marriage. If you hope your partner will miraculously figure you out with all your needs and expectations without discussion, you will be in for disappointment.” Good marriages are not the ones in which partners read each other’s minds, but the ones where they actively communicate their needs and expectations.

5. Good marriages always have a lot of passion:

Well, the truth is that you will not always have passionate sex and you will not always feel fireworks with your partner, especially as the years come and go. Nevertheless, Moral says that resigning to the fact that passions will fade will only make an unsatisfactory sex life a self-fulfilling prophecy. You may not enjoy the lustful passions of the past, but putting in some effort will help you keep the fire burning.