I read once that someone asked this man about what marriage advice he could give.
I loved how this man responded to such a question,
“After 25 years of marriage, the best advice I could give is no advice. The longer I am married, the shorter my advice. I feel like I have no competency in giving any marriage advice”.
It hit me hard reading that.
Usually, older adults will give you lots of advice when asked such questions. They will provide tips and tricks about what to do or shouldn’t do.
Being married myself, I realized that the man above was correct. There are no specific bits of advice like one size fits all. One don’t or do might work for some couples but might not work for others. Whatever principles you hold firmly before marriage might be the ones you throw to the deepest place inside because, after a long battle, it is not the right thing to do; it is not the best option once you zoom out and consider all the consequences in the future if you choose that.
This is just not me. I recently finished a book that confirmed such a thing.
This book told about one of the research with the most significant samples out there about how to predict whether people would be happy in their relationship or not.
These are a few of their findings :
It also actually reminded me of another relationship book; this one is quite famous and largely quoted everywhere. Written by two relationship researchers couple that said, based on long years that happened in their lab, they could predict whether the couple will survive their marriage or not with 95% accuracy. They were able to do this by analyzing thousands of couples from the way they interact with each other.
Well, in the end, no matter how many relationship books I have read, I always remembered what the man above said whenever some younger people in my current volunteer asked some questions about this.
Kind of responses I gave only the short ones because they were the only things I considered doable: “Don’t rush. Enjoy yourself a lot. Ask with the utmost details about what kind of person you want to deal with life with, and let God do the rest”.
If Forest Gump said that life is just like a box of chocolate, you’ll never know what you will get. For me, that is exactly what marriage is.
A Penny for My Pensieve 
I know this subject is rather controversial for many Indonesians (and religious people) but I find that living together before you get married do help to know your partners’ habits and behaviors. You can’t simply know much about them until you live with them 24/7 (the same goes for roomies, family members and all, the reason that we know our family members well – some do, at least – is because we live with them). I read so many “ibu-ibu” complaining about their husbands’ habit of throwing wet towels on the floor LOL and so on, although it’s not necessarily a deal breaker in the honeymoon phase, but it would add up to the arguments as you go on later
When (bad) habits and behaviors are out of the way, I guess some people are more compatible with others than some, despite the fact that both are – say – good people.
I was married and divorced before for many reasons, and got married again and feel like the luckiest girl so far, so, yeah what makes marriage works? Both of us are obviously not compatible with our ex-es.
I agree that some people are not just compatible with each other, although both are good people. I heard a lot of couple decide to be sepeated on their early years of marriage, that is totally understandable for me. But lately, I observed or maybe exposed that couple above 15 years finally decided the same thing too. At first, it made me wonder, what happened? After a while, I learned two people might grow to different directions along the way. They might be compatible at the beginning, but, guess we’ll never know what happens during the journey. So, in a way, the research result that said “There is not a set of traits that guarantee romantic happiness or preclude romantic happiness. And no algorithm in the world can predict, with enormous accuracy, whether two people will end up happy together”, well, that maybe the case. They could be happy now, but who knows later?
Talking about a wet towel, I did experience that too on the beginning, but,instead of complaining, I just put it back to where it belongs. Along the way, the habit disappeared. Guess showing the way works better than compaining😁
Thanks a lot for dropping by and the insight! I am so happy to hear that you’re now with the one that makes you feel the luckiest girl❤️