A friend and I were talking about marriage the other day. She’s been married a long time and I’ve been married twice, so we felt like between the two of us, we had some knowledge on the matter. We were talking the other day about the pressure that is put on newlyweds to be “happy” in their new marriages.
I mean of course! Why wouldn’t you be happy? Your marriage is new, it’s exciting, it’s romantic, you are young and haven’t settled down to child-raising yet. What could be better?
But, let’s face it, the early years of marriage are tough. It’s tough to live with another person. Your habits are different, your wants and desires are different.
No one tells us how hard it’s going to be to live with another person. We grow up hearing fairy stories about happily ever after and we think being a newlywed is synonymous with happiness.
No matter how much we love the person we live with, we hate how they leave the peanut butter on the spoon in the sink, how they leave the ice cube tray empty, how they smell sometimes, or weird noises they make. We keep score: I’m doing more housework than you, I’m making more money than you, I’m contributing more to this relationship than you.
Newlyweds don’t want to admit to anyone and especially not to their new spouse that they might be unhappy. But that very admission, might actually be the best possible thing. It doesn’t mean they’ve failed. It doesn’t mean I’ve failed. But it’s an important thing to admit.
None of us wants to admit if or when we are unhappy. We think that if we are unhappy there is something terribly wrong with us or with our lives. We are afraid of being unhappy. Afraid it might mean failure, afraid it might mean loss, afraid it might mean pain.
And certainly, there may be times when we decide that we are unhappy with something or someone and it’s time for a change. But the difference there is that the unhappiness is about an actual circumstance and not about who we ARE. It’s not about success or failure, it’s about whether or not this or that particular ongoing circumstance aligns with what I want out of life. And even then, let’s be clear, even when we get what we want out of life, we may not feel a feeling of happiness. Maybe we will feel a sense of satisfaction, or achievement, maybe we will have more peace and less stress. But happiness? It’s elusive.
We are constantly inundated with the message that we just should BE happy. Bookstores are full of books that tell us how to be happy. Social media feeds are full of quotes and quips about how to find happiness. Gurus are telling us how to manifest happiness.
And in the frantic pursuit of happiness…. Happiness becomes a tyrant.
I don’t think that happiness should be the goal.
Why can’t it just be OK to be unhappy? What would be wrong with that?
Happiness comes and goes. We are happy as we leave work and head home. Then, we are unhappy when we get home from work and do two hours of housework while our husbands and children sit and watch Netflix. We are happy when we anticipate starting that new Netflix series we’ve been wanting to watch. We are unhappy if we come home from work and sit and watch Netflix with our husbands and children and wake up to a filthy house the next day. We are happy when the people we live with offer to chip in and help out. We are unhappy afterward because of the bad attitude they had throughout and the poor quality of help they contributed.
Happiness comes
Happiness goes.
Unhappiness is inevitable.
It seems to me that when we stop trying to BE happy, we are much happier. I mean, really – who cares? Do we HAVE To be happy? It seems like a lot of pressure to me.
Can’t we just be up sometimes and down sometimes without having to try to achieve happiness?
Why the constant wish to feel something else than what we actually feel?
Can’t we just be and feel whatever we feel without feeling as though we’ve failed at life, without feeling like someone else has failed us?
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