"The relationship between husband and wife should be one of closest friends."
- B. R. Ambedkar
When you finally find love you think the world stopped just for the two of you. That is such a wonderful feeling and you carry that with you throughout the first few months or years of your relationship. It all depends on the personalities and circumstances of those involved. This is just a feeling a mere emotional response to the great happiness that accompanies your firm choice in a lifelong partner. However, life begins to happen. Stressors enter your life and commonly we lash out at those closest to us.
We do this for many reasons. I believe the main reason is the people closest to us are often the origin of some major stressors in our life. Secondly there is a saying that familiarity breads contempt. This is a very true statement. That is why you see your relationship with your parents and siblings improve after moving out of the house. They are no longer there causing you stress and invading areas of your life on a daily basis.
When you marry you are inviting a person into your life that you will coexist with day in and day out. This is bound to cause issues. Just remember there was a reason for your choice and it was most likely a good one. I find that relationships built on friendship seem to be able to weather many storms. This is not to say it must start this way. You have a choice of who are your friends. Make the choice that your spouse is a friend instead of a fiend and you are on your way to making significant progress in a happy marriage.
You must talk with your spouse and decide together that you’re on the same team and working toward the same goals. Sometimes it may feel like you are operating to different ends, but that is probably due the difference between gender, upbringing, culture or any other difference between the two of you. Remember that you have lived lives completely separate from each other until you became married. This means what one person sees as distant is another person’s form of introspection and necessary to resolve personal issues. Therefore, when your mate is not talking to you right now it may be just their way of processing the issue. The key is communicating what the silence means. This is best done when you are both happy or at least on neutral footing with each other. When you are in the heat of an argument it rarely helps bringing up differences and expectations of immediate resolution. Instead wait for the right moment to bring up things you don’t understand about the other person, or things you have difficulty processing.
Understanding and communication go hand in hand. You want to be understood by your partner and your partner wants to be understood by you. This makes for a beautiful foundation for a lasting friendship. A lasting friendship makes a strong foundation for marriage.