What helps to overcome difficulties in the first year
of marriage? What habits should become the norm? Is it worth it to fear
conflicts? How should we build relationships with our parents? And why should
we study psychology? Archpriest Paul Gumerov speaks on all of this in this
installment of our conversation.
Hello, dear friends. We are continuing our
conversation on family and family relationships. The theme of today’s meeting
is “the first year of marriage.”
The first year is indeed a very important one in
family life, and the most difficult. It brings quite sorrowful statistics. If
you take a hundred divorces registered at any courthouse, you will see that
twenty-five percent of them are from the first year of marriage. People
couldn’t even wait until the second year of family life! Why does it happen
this way? They couldn’t endure the difficulties of this time.
Should we fear difficulties?
The first year is a time of adjusting to one another.
They already knew about this three thousand years ago. We can read in the Old
Testament that a youth, entering into marriage, was freed from every state and
community work and duty, and didn’t serve in the army, in order to settle his
family life and build his family nest.
This period is very important. He and she get used to
one another. He and she are united in the collaborative building of their nest.
Infatuation helps them very much. We know that infatuation will not continue
forever. It continues, in all, for a few months or a year. As a rule, in
marriage it’s already fading. There needs to be serious cooperative work,
serious creativity towards creating a relationship of a different type—marital
love.
As always, I have gathered the questions most often
posed on this topic—questions about what those planning to get married need to
know about the first months and years of family life, and how to prepare
themselves for them. He who is forewarned is armed, as they say.
Venerable John of the Ladder wrote that a person
having a difficult, combative character can be likened to a rock that collides with
another rock, and in these collisions two possible sequences of events can
develop: these rocks are either rounded off, becoming such smooth, weather-worn
pebbles, or they shatter into pieces. But the saint notes that even if they
shatter, a person will understand his weakness, will understand that he has a
difficult character and that he needs to work on it. And in such failures you
can discern for yourself great importance , to see some of your mistakes.
So, the first year. Yes, it’s difficult for new
spouses in this time, but it’s also easy, because they must resolve many
problems together, and it unites them, and helps them to become one whole. What
kind of problems?: relationships with your families, housing which you are
either buying or renting. Often within ten months after the wedding or a little
later, but within the first year of marriage, a child is born which also
seriously strongly unites the spouses and forces them to care for this new,
third member of their family together. A joint project quite strongly unites.
And these difficulties themselves are later, as a rule, remembered with a
pleasant sadness. After all they are the best years of family life. Therefore,
we shouldn’t fear difficulties.
Man in general, getting married, shouldn’t be afraid.
It’s not good for man to be alone. And if someone fulfills the commandments of
God and approaches such tasks with responsibility, the Lord will help him.
About habit in marriage
People often ask why they say “the family boat has
crashed against life,” and what to do in order to keep the newness, freshness,
and sincerity of the relationship.
In our previous talks we spoke about how important our
relationships are before marriage, when we should learn to timidly and
carefully relate to one another and to take care of one another. We should
learn to give more than to receive—it’s very important. I’m reminded of the
diaries of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her letters to the Emperor on the
front during the First World War. The empress was very worried for her spouse,
and what tender letters she wrote to him! I advise everyone who wants to
prepare for marriage to first read these sweet letters. The royal couple
already had five children, they were far from being young, the emperor was just
under fifty, and they related to one another as if in the first months of
marriage, on their honeymoon, or even as if before marriage. What gentle words
they speak, what names they call one another, how they’re nervous and worry
about one another… They’re all very important points. Empress Alexandra
Feodorovna wrote in her diaries that family happiness emerges from the small,
easily forgettable episodes which, maybe, are worth nothing to us—cups of tea
served by a caring hand, complimentary words we have said to the other person.
And people get used to the good—to the good they have every day.
We should at least please our other half with small
things. This should become a good habit to replace another habit of bantering
with, or teasing, or making some nagging comments towards our other half.
And it seems to me that every family man, reads
morning prayers and prays to God: “Lord, help me this day to behave so as to
delight my family and loved ones as much as possible and to grieve them as
little as possible.” We must avoid unkind advice, avoid barbs in communication
and avoid sermonizing and moralizing. It’s quite easy. You don’t have to offer
any sacrifices or waste much time and means on this. Is it really difficult to
buy your wife some chocolate when you leave work, and give her flowers once a
week?
And to wives, meeting their husbands coming home from
work, it’s not worth it to load him up from the doorstep with some problems.
“They’re calling you to school: our son again got a D for the quarter;” “my
computer broke—you should fix it right away,” and on and on. Let your husband
rest and gather his strength. And you should train your children to greet papa
with reverence and respect. First say some kind words to him, feed him, give
him some tea, and then proceed with some serious questions and conversations.
People also ask about housekeeping. Today, as a rule,
women work alongside men, but, coming home from work, the husband relaxes, but
the wife begins to cook, and wash and clean, and so on. So, how to divide up
the household chores?
Yes, the classical model of marriage is more stable as
per the statistics: the wife at home with the children, settling the family
nest, caring for her husband and children, that is, fulfilling purely feminine
functions. And the husband is the head, the breadwinner, the provider, the
hunter. But the classical model cannot always be implemented today. It’s not
easy for one husband to feed a big family. And if the wife also works, as so
often happens, then husband and wife should do the household chores evenly,
somehow coming to an agreement about it. Of course he is tired, and she is
tired, and she, perhaps, moreso, because she also has the kids, lessons,
laundry, cooking, ironing—all purely feminine work. But it seems to me that the
authority even of the venerable head of the family will not come crashing down
if he helps his wife wash the dishes or cook dinner or tidy up the apartment.
This is just how we show our love.
Love is not about serious sacrifices, but very simple,
daily actions. It’s sacrificing your free time. For example, when you are tired
after work, but, seeing that your wife is overwhelmed, you help her set the
table, help her clear the table, and enlist the children. It’s also very
important. Here it’s not necessary to agree to the division of
responsibilities, but just to lend a hand.
What should husbands know about female psychology, and
wives about the male?
We need to know about specific female and male needs,
to not mess things up.
Husbands and wives, men and women are creatures
created by God with very different psychologies, not just different
physiologies. It’s not accidental. Generally everything that the Lord does is
for our salvation. Therefore, every one of us has the opportunity to serve
another person in marriage. Men are creatures of greater physical strength and
durability. And he should have the need and desire to help his wife, to take
upon himself any kind of heavy work, and to lend a helping hand. Wives, as
creations inclined towards empathy, towards compassion and towards sympathy,
should desire to comfort their husbands, to caress him, and take away his
fatigue.
The Lord created us differently. This is a given—it’s
a fact. And even if people strive for equality and equal rights, nothing
happens. There are even male and female professions, and men and women retire
at different times. Men serve in the army, and women don’t serve. Men compete against
men in the same sport, and women against women. We are built differently and
there’s nothing we can do about it.
I’d like to focus on one important point: removing
stress. The reaction of men and women to stress is completely different, and
spouses should know about this. Women remove stress most often by
communicating. They even produce a specific “communication hormone”—oxytocin.
When a man says some nice words to a woman and caresses her, her body produces
these hormones which fight against stress. And when the husband comes home, the
wife wants to communicate and chat with him. For women it’s generally very
important to express themselves. We all know that girls begin speaking much
earlier than boys.
A man deals with stress differently. He needs some
time to be alone. Generally for men periods of activity and passivity
alternate. Even if a man sits at work behind his computer or handles some
papers, without physical labor, not putting up posts or digging trenches, all
the same it is for him a time of activity, and it must give way to a period of
inactivity. So after work it’s very important for a husband to rest, to be
alone and unwind. Wives should remember this. As I already said, don’t
immediately burden your husband having arrived home from work with any of your
problems. Give him, maybe, an hour, place a guard around the door and divert
the children that they don’t bother papa. But, of course, it’s preferable that
the husband’s stress won’t take too long to subside, not hours, and to have time
to do something with his family and to satisfy his wife’s need to communicate.
Why does a husband need peace? Here again it’s all in
the hormones. For a man to relieve his stress, for manly endurance testosterone
responds—a purely masculine hormone, and it is produced in a state of rest.
It’s not produced from communication, from exercise or anything else. So it’s
necessary to give your husband the chance just to sit, read, or watch a film.
It’s completely normal for him. Many wives don’t understand this and think that
if she has a need to talk, then the husband should listen and talk with her.
Indeed, he should, but a little later.
Men must absolutely satisfy a woman’s need to talk,
otherwise she’ll talk to someone else—with her girlfriends, endlessly
discussing her husband, or with her mama, with her mother-in-law… And you
yourself will very seriously suffer if you don’t talk with your wife.
Is it possible to avoid fights?
It’s very important to separate two concepts: fights
and conflicts. Conflicts in family life are unavoidable—not a single family has
been able to bypass conflict. Why? “Conflict” is an English word meaning
“collision,” and a man and woman, as different creatures, as people from
different families, with different interest, will not avoid colliding. There’s
a Russian proverb: “a pot collides with a pot.” And what can we say about
people! Everyone has his own character and interests, everyone judges from his
belfry, and looks at problems in his own way. Most important is that a conflict
does not develop into a fight. We will talk about family conflicts in another
talk, but I will briefly state the main point: it’s important not to give place
to anger and irritation in order to discuss all disputed issues, clashes, and
conflicts of interest in a peaceful state of soul. Don’t lose your peace,
because peace is the most important thing. If you don’t have peace in your
souls, if you don’t have peace in your families, then although you have earthly
blessings, things won’t be good for you and you won’t have happiness. Happiness
is within us—it is peace of soul and peace with our loved ones. It is precisely
in this that family harmony and human happiness consist.
Relationships with parents
What could be the pitfalls in communicating with your
parents? Can we allow parents to interfere in a young family’s
life—financially, by advice?...
In the marriage service it says: “the prayers of
parents make firm the foundations of houses”—not interference, not intrusive
help, not the counterintuitive assistance which parents sometimes offer. And
moreover, we know that in Holy Scripture it says: Therefore shall a man leave
his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be
one flesh (Gen. 2:24). And we must know this commandment as spouses and as
parents.
Parents shouldn’t interfere in the lives of spouses.
We’ve brought our child up to adulthood, invested in him all we were able to
invest: the reasonable, good, eternal and spiritual, and now we must pray for
him. We should help our adult children but not interfere in any situation in
their lives, because such interference, as a rule, ends sadly. And spouses, I
repeat, should remember this commandment as well, because many spouses aren’t
able to pull themselves away from their parents.
One man came to me once in the church and said that
his family life now is in a very trying situation. He has a child from his
first cohabitation—he wasn’t married, but he considers that he has
responsibilities towards this child and this woman, and what’s more—his mother
is sick and in need of help. But his current partner doesn’t like any of it.
She doesn’t like that he goes off to his mother and to this woman and that he
spends so much time with the child. I told him that’s she absolutely correct to
not like it, because the hierarchy of family values in the life of a married
man or woman should be lined up like this: in the first place the husband or
wife, because they are one flesh—this is the first degree of relationship, then
children, then parents. We have obligations before parents, of course, but we
shouldn’t place them on a higher level in the family hierarchy or consider them
closer than those closest to us, and for a husband that’s the wife, and for a
wife the husband. When this hierarchy is violated our other halves inevitably
suffer. Maybe mama is pleased that her son visits her often, but his wife, as a
rule, is not pleased that her husband disappears to his parents. Moreover,
parents quite often manipulate their adult children, feigning sicknesses,
needing some kind of help, and a man tosses everything and runs to them…
Sometimes such issues are resolved with great difficulty.
Once a couple came to me, talking about their
circumstances. The wife’s mother was sick, in serious condition, but for some
reason the couple couldn’t take her in; maybe the husband didn’t want his
mother-in-law to live with them. They hired a good, paid nurse. They visited
her mother regularly, taking a priest to confess and commune her and give her
Unction. They made such a compromise. Their family peace was preserved,
although in order to pay the nurse they had to find additional work.
Such questions, regarding conflicts of interest,
should always be resolved in peace and love. And the main, decisive word should
be that of our spouse, and not of our parents, because parents, unfortunately,
so often love their children with blind parental love.
And again on psychology
My friends, it’s imperative to study family
psychology. I can recommend some books on this topic: The Little Church and
Keys to Family Happiness—don’t think this is a self-advertisement. These books
were released by the publishing house of Sretensky Monastery. It says in them
that wives should know about husbands, and husbands about wives. I have another
book called Him and Her, precisely about why the Lord created us so
differently, about the differences in male and female psychology, and about how
to come to unity in family life—to unity in marriage. I would like to emphasize
again: The Lord created us differently precisely for unity in family life. As
Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin said, by the presence of a living love and a living
conscience in man, even our differences lead to unity, and to manifesting the
best qualities of our souls.
Peace, goodness and love to you all, and may the Lord
save you.
By archpriest Pavel Gumerov
Source: http://orthochristian.com/94937.html
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