You hear a lot of criticism and jokes about the "trap" of marriage. Yet, many are attracted to the "bait" at least; 96% of us live with a partner sometime in our lives. Most of us are eager to do so--and for good reasons. Loving someone brings so many joys and thrills and so much comfort. it can be fantastic. An unhappy marriage, however, can be terrible. Marriage is very different for different people. We don't know exactly how to make marriage be what we want it to be. Facts of marriage are usually confused with myths.
There are many reasons why people are surprised by the actual experience of marriage. One of them is that most people have a poor idea of what day-to-day living in marriage is really like. Assumptions people make about marriage are often very different from reality. According to the textbook, there are five major myths about marriage that unfortunately many people believe. (Knox & Schacht, 1999) .
The first is, Our Marriage will be different (Knox & Schacht, 1999). Most people know married couples that are unhappy, fight, are bored, etc. This myth is the "it won't happen to us" idea couples have usually before marriage. According to Knox and Schacht, this is dangerous because "many of us who enter marriage believing that it will be different for us blindly imitate the marriage patterns of others instead of making a conscious effort to manage our own relationship to make it as fulfilling as we expect it to be" (1999).
The second myth about marriage is, We Will Make Each Other Happy. Even though your partner has some influence on your happiness, each partner has other life roles other than spouse (Knox & Schacht, 1999). These other roles can taint the interaction with one's spouse. For example, if you have lost your job, it would make it very difficult for you to make your spouse happy. Knox and Schacht make a good point by saying. "Waiting for someone else to make you happy is quite likely to be a life long wait (1999)! .
