Let me make clear that I am all for getting married if the gut inside of you tells you have the right partner and you have no doubts whatsoever of the long-term direction of the relationship. I am also an advocate of taking any action necessary to seek help if your marriage is on the rocks.
As I enjoy my nice cup of masala chai this morning, I was questioning why marriages don’t last. If you Google “statistics on marriage failure” you will find sites indicating that nearly 50% of first marriages and 60% of second marriages end in divorce. While the percentages are irrelevant, which is more important is the takeaway is that all marriages don’t last.
Why is this so? I wanted to explore this a bit deeper and I so I ran another Google query to find out the percentage of dating relationships that will end up in a break-up. My theory being that past behavior will be indicative of future behavior. After all, setting aside arranged marriage, isn’t the so-called love marriage stem from a dating relationship that is on fire?
Finding statistics on dating failures was difficult. I couldn’t find anything that speaks to this area even when I Googled it. However, there were some queries that came back in discussion forums which indicated that approximately 99% of dating relationships will fail.
99% failure! Wow! While I can’t source this statistic, it certainly leads one to conclude that dating failures will be more than marriage failures given the number of people we date until we think we “have found the right one.”
If one reads too much into this statistic, one will think that the chances are pretty slim that you will be able to find a relationship that will last. All hope is not lost. The question is how long can a relationship be sustained?
In the technology world, sustainment is typically used to define the series of activities that are used to operate and maintain an application system. The cost to maintain systems are generally very high upon implementation to maintain performance and ensure system availability, but then the costs become lower and more stabilized over time as the system performs efficiently. This is until a decision is made over time not to enhance the system or shut it down completely for a new system.
Now, the success in sustaining systems is driven by a variety of factors:
- Unforeseeable events that can impact the system such as increase in usage or lack of availability
- Required amount of work and resources necessary to upkeep and maintain the system
- Cost to enhance the system and make upgrades or technology refresh
- Efficiency of a help-desk to resolve system issues in a timely manner
It’s interesting to see the correlation between maintaining an application system and maintaining your relationship. The biggest reason in my mind why technology implementations fail is failure to realize the sustainment effort of the system and long-term value to its users.
Likewise, my thoughts on why marriages fail is the inability to understand the sustainment effort of marriage as a system with one exception than the technology system – the fact that there is absolutely no period where there is no enhancements being made or decision to shut the marriage down completely.
Marriages don’t just fail upon signing a marriage certificate – what people don’t realize is that they fail at the on-set of dating where the realization that it can’t even be sustained is overlooked.
The reason why we are so blind to this is that we think “in-the-time” dimension when we are in the dating phase of our relationship. This is executed by taking action in the dating relationship that seeks some sort of declaration as an output:
- We run off to dinner dates and movies every Saturday night and start to declare that we are compatible
- We seek sexual satisfaction and start to declare that our new-found lover is our “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”
- We meet our partner’s family and start to declare that we are now “part of the family”
- We move in with our partner and start to declare the we “belong together”
These declarations add up contributing to the state of the relationship as it exists in its static condition today, and not in it’s dynamic, ever-evolving, ever-changing state of what it really is over time.
What we become blind to is what is really sustainable over time in the unknown dimension – the “time-less” dimension. This is the dimension that is unforeseeable. It’s the wave that hits you while you are surfing that comes out of no-where.
Dating occurs in the time dimension while marriage events occur in the timeless dimension where making declarations becomes pointless as things are constantly changing. Here are some examples of things you may say once you get into a marriage that differ than when you are dating:
- “We always go out for dinner and movie on Saturday, why are we eating at home tonight?”
- “I am not in the mood to have sex tonight, maybe tomorrow”
- “Do I have to see your family, again?
- “Can you stop snoring in bed, I can’t stand it!”
Get my point? These example show how things change over time. For a marriage to last you need to remove the context of it being time-bound. This means once you have made the shift from dating to marriage that it is meant to last as long as you are meant to last.
Marriage is not just meant to last based on thoughts of being compatible and making compromises – if this was the case, all marriages would last but even those based on these principles don’t last because the quality of the relationship is so sub-par.
Questioning whether your relationship can sustained while you are in the dating relationship is the single most important question you need to answer before jumping into marriage – and the single most important question that will lead you from the sub-par relationship to the “kick-ass” relationship. Any doubts, questions of trust, family concerns, health issues, etc. about your partner will lead your marriage in the wrong direction.
Look, not all relationships are meant to last, but we cause so much pain inside ourselves by bleeding dating relationships to death. Realize that the troubles you are anticipated to face in a marriage may be covered up while you are dating and these need to be explored and questioned. Not every relationship is sustainable.
The only thing that will make your marriage last will be the realization that your gut is guiding you in the direction of sustainment. If you have any doubts, don’t go any further. The best thing that will happen is that you will do less harm to yourself and your partner in the long run.