Have you ever asked yourself why marriages fail? I ask that question too.
Many times, I have imagined the way people feel when they fell in love with someone for the first time: I guess you know exactly what am talking about. It feels like nothing else exists but just the two of them. They want to be together all the time.
Then they marry each other, and start enjoying their marriage; one year, two years, three years… And suddenly, things start taking a new shape; quarrels and fights become the order of the day. Not that we want to fight or quarrel, but we do quarrel anyway.
Sometimes we blame it on the “practicalities” and routines of life, and sometimes we blame ourselves.
In the earlier stages of our marriage, things were not like that. There were lots of things we want to talk to each other about; we always want to be in each other’s arms.
Now, the ability to talk deep about our feelings and aspirations has gradually died down and our conversation now starts revolving around just the domestic duties and other plans.
The three questions that usually come to my mind when I see this happen is this “what happened to that first love?” is there a thin line between love and hate? And are all these enough to make marriages fail?
Most couples have lost the consciousness of the things that brought them together, we have taken each other for granted, and worst of all, we sometimes find each other annoying and boring.
But why have marriages failed more in our generation than it was before? It worked for our great grandfather, and many of us see it working for our parents too.
One thing is that we don’t want the quarrels or fight, we want to marry and enjoy our spouse, but the world we live in now has added so many roadblocks in our ways and have made it hard for us to have a happy married life with someone we love.
In this article, I took my time to list for you 10 reasons why couples are not happy anymore with their marriage and why marriages fail.
10 Reasons Why marriages fail
Here they are::)
1) Advancement in technology is one of the reasons:-
The internet, social media, and cell phones have played a very significant role in why marriages fail today.
In research conducted on married couples, 54% of them accepted that their mobile phone has brought negative impacts on their marriage.
Some years back, we want to take certain steps just to prove to someone that we love him/her.
We want to go the extra mile because we will not want anything to come between us and our fiance.
Technology has taken over
Then, technology has not exploded the way it is now, things were very much different than it is now; text massaging was starting them, social media was not heard of as it is now.
Those days, if you want to see him or her, you must have to drive to wherever you will have the opportunity. You must take a certain action to express your love.
Today, things are different. Technology has taken over everything. You can be in a very distant place and send flowers to your spouse. You may not see or hear your spouse’s voice when you want to communicate with him or her.
Our cell phones buzz at breakfast, we check our emails in the evening, when we are taking a ride the radio play, and television is there when we come home to share times.
Check how many hours you do this
Nowadays, when people get stressed up, instead of going back home to their spouse to be cheered up, they prefer to stay in front of the television to get the solace they need.
We have been faced with so many distractions.
I am not saying that advancement in technology is bad. But it has made us be far from the one we love, which is one of the reasons why marriages fail.
2) Sexual frequency declined is another reason why marriages fail:-
Sex is very important in every relationship. One of the way couple could express what they feel for each other is through sex; it brings two people closer to each other.
As the year goes by, the sexual lives of partners start declining or become none existent at all due to the age of the couple or the duration of the relationship.
Looking at the data from (NSHSLS) National health and social life survey, and that of (NSHAP) National Social Life, health and Aging project, I realized that the decline in sex frequency could be due to a change in the status of the marriage or physical health of the couples,
Things were not so earlier.
Most couples no more look forward to seeing their spouse undress just as it used to be during the earlier stage of the marriage.
Many of them even find it hard to have sex once a month; many others do that only when they want to have children.
Tell me how marriage will fair. : )
When you look at the cases of cheating in marriage, most of the reasons for that are the inability of the couple to satisfy each other sexually or even have sex at all.
That is one reason I feel hurt inside when I see couples who do not take sex seriously, because they are heading for serious destruction.
If you are not doing any other thing, try to work on your sex life. Tweet This
You may want to read my article on how to improve your boring sex life.
3) Internet and social media:-
The Internet has made so many marriages fail. It has taken away our loved ones from us. Almost all divorce lawyers believe that the internet contributed to the rapid increase in divorce in the world today especially social media and chatting.
Social media has helped couples invite thousand of other people into their matrimonial bed with just a click.
There is nothing like privacy again in our lives. With just a click you will show a total stranger the innermost part of your wardrobe, your kitchen, the new undercover you are wearing, or even the part of your body that naturally is meant to be seen by your spouse only.
Good outside
We find more time to share everything we do with a stranger, everything we do, everywhere we go, and we are more connected with people outside than we do with our spouse.
The couple has no time to share their experiences again because there is nothing new to share; all have been shared outside.
What baffles me most is that even the little time left for the couple to enjoy together, you see everyone hooked on cyberspace looking for the most current update and chatting with friends neglecting the important moment in marriage.
Everything has been exposed
The latest of it all is that you may be with your spouse in the same bed while your spouse is sex chatting with another person on the internet.
Tell me how marriage will work in this atmosphere. : )
There is absolutely nothing wrong when you chat with people on the internet, but we just have to have a place to draw the line, we must know when it becomes too much.
The Internet has destroyed the relationships we enjoyed with our spouses and some marriages have also been chattered by it.
4) We love validation but not to be loved:-
Although this is not for everyone, a lot of us are purely guilty of this; we love to be validated at all times, we desire attention from people, and we want people to like us more than to love us.
We all want to be famous. When you wear your latest cloth, you want people to see them.
Thanks to social media, which has allowed everyone to be that famous? It has made our dreams to become a celebrity come true. : )
Everything is easy now
You struggle to get people’s attention before, now with just a click you get more than you needed. All you need to do is just upload a picture, and you get thousands of likes from strangers.
Well! All those are good, but my advice is this “If you want to love someone, quit looking for attention from any other place and concentrate on the one you get from your spouse.
It is not easy to love someone when you are preoccupied with worries about what other people think of you, whether it is posting pictures on social media, spending lavishly just to impress others, or going on vacation because others did.
5) The quest to be financially independent crippled us:–
Finance plays a very important role in any marriage, and that is the reason the subject of finance and how to make a proper plan on how to make use of it to keep the marriage going should not be neglected.
But the quest to get enough money down to be able to meet our other needs has separated us from the normal relationships we are supposed to enjoy with our spouses.
You will believe with me that things are not the same way they are now during years ago; nowadays, there are so many things you must do in other to be happier in life, and they require a large sum of money to get it done.
If you want your marriage to work, you must nurture it from time to time. Tweet This.
Think about how much it takes you to run your home now; the children’s education, and other necessities. Now calculate what it costs then and compare it with today, you will see the difference.
Because all these are indispensable, we have neglected our marriage so that we could get enough money to sustain it.
Now you have to get your hands on any work to pay for utilities, send your children to school, and the worst of it all is that it is so difficult to get the kind of job that can provide such income to you.
You can imagine what harm this has caused to families. It has prevented us from living our lives as a couple. We find ourselves so busy paying bills that we forget about taking our spouse out for dinner, you have to forget about your usual vacation this year because the bills are there staring at your face.
We are going farther apart than coming together.
6) Not getting over grudges:
Our inabilities to deal with the grudges we have against our spouse is another important reason why marriages fail.
To move your marriage forward, we must always have a place in our hearts to forgive and let go of those things our spouse has done to us.
Stacy became sad that the husband forgot their marriage anniversary. When the husband realized that, he did everything he could do to pacify her, yet Stacy found it hard to let go.
The husband soon becomes frustrated with the wife’s attitude. He committed some errors and has also shown how sorry he was by getting flowers and other gifts for her.
It is the husband that caused the problem, and now Stacy has compounded the issues.
7 Lack of forgiveness:
If saying sorry is hard for you, then you should think of other ways of doing that, like living a note on the table saying “ I am sorry”. Keep it anywhere your spouse could see it before going to bed.
When you go about your with the grudges of what your spouse did to you, it will keep the two of you farther from each other.
Forgiveness will go a long way to make your marriage strong again; the absence will destroy it.
Quick tips on how to forgive:
(1) Map out a time to talk about the matter.
2) Let your spouse know why you are upset
(3) Tell him/her right there that you have forgiven the sin.
(4) Never remember the issues again.
(5) Keep reminding yourself that you have settled the issues.
When you forgive your spouse, you have taken your first step to becoming close with your spouse.
8) Baggage from yesterday:
Before two of you came together as husband and wife, you lived your lives individually. Some of us had different experiences, histories, and responses that left a mark in our lives. This baggage usually stays with us for the rest of our lives.
Simply put, we have this baggage as we go into marriage; I am talking about past happiness, hurts, and attitudes. Do you know that Such old baggage has made so many marriages fail?
For example; if you knew your parents to be the type that likes to fight always, you may probably think that the best way of dealing with your challenges is to fight.
If you are the last in your family, probably you were pampered by your parents, the tendency is that you may be expecting everybody to pamper you the same way.
If you are from a personal relationship that was not pleasing, you may think your new spouse will be the same.
The best way to move forward is to let the baggage go and face your new marriage with commitment and believe that it is a new beginning.
You can look for a marriage therapist or counselor to help you deal with those issues of the past.
Other ways to drop our past baggage
(1) Take full responsibility for your problems.
(2) Forgive yourself.
(3) Ask God to help you.
(4) Move on with your life.
9) Unsolved problems:
One of the challenges we face in marriage today is the unresolved issues. It is better to deal with conflict in our marriage immediately they occur than to let it linger.
Usually, 68% of issues in the marriage are managed instead of being solved and they sometimes pop up again in a more damaging way.
If we are not able to solve these when they are still at the fingertip, it may turn out to be complex, and suddenly, your judgments will change and you start seeing your spouse as the cause of the whole thing.
We build walls but the bitterness is usually sown. Unresolved issues bring divisions and separation to couples.
Also, know that solution doesn’t happen like magic. It may take some time. That is the reason you should start the process now.
10) Extended families sometimes can cause a marriage to fail:
The number of 10th reason marriages fails could be from our extended familiarity.
Our in-laws could sometimes be our best friends and at times be a foe to us too as some in-laws will want to be in the center of your marriage.
It is obvious we can get good advice and wisdom from our parents, however, there has to be a boundary.
There is every tendency that what worked for them may not work for us also. You have to make these known to your parents that your marriage, spouse, and family are your topmost priority, and that you still love them as your parents.
You should be able to make the decisions that will be best for your marriage and do those things you deem best for you and your family.
In conclusion:
Marriage is meant to be enjoyed and not to be endured. Even when you are sure your marriage is not working, you can stand your ground and make a difference.
Do things that are only bringing joy and happiness to your spouse. Take steps that will bring the two of you closer, then such that will bring separation.
If you look at the above-listed reasons why marriages fail, you will notice that that thing could be avoided. So try to avoid them if you can.
It’s possible
If there is such a marriage that could be described as a happy marriage that means you can make your already broken or dead marriage to be strong and alive again.
It all depends on you.
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Bonus read: