Buat kalian yang merasa galau akan sebuah pernikahan, tulisan berikut ini wajib dibaca. Happy reading yah...
I met my wife in high school when we were
15 years old. We were friends for ten years until…until we decided no longer
wanted to be just friends. :) I strongly recommend that best friends fall in
love. Good times will be had by all.
Nevertheless, falling in love with my best
friend did not prevent me from having certain fears and anxieties about getting
married. The nearer Kim and I approached the decision to marry, the more I was
filled with a paralyzing fear. Was I ready? Was I making the right choice? Was
Kim the right person to marry? Would she make me happy?
Then, one fateful night, I shared these
thoughts and concerns with my dad.
Perhaps each of us have moments in our
lives when it feels like time slows down or the air becomes still and
everything around us seems to draw in, marking that moment as one we will never
forget.
My dad giving his response to my concerns
was such a moment for me. With a knowing smile he said, “Seth, you’re being
totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple: marriage isn’t for
you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else
happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a
family. Not just for the in-laws and all of that nonsense, but for your future
children. Who do you want to help you raisethem? Who do you want to influence
them? Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person
you married.”
It was in that very moment that I knew that
Kim was the right person to marry. I realized that I wanted to make her happy;
to see her smile every day, to make her laugh every day. I wanted to be a part
of her family, and my family wanted her to be a part of ours. And thinking back
on all the times I had seen her play with my nieces, I knew that she was the
one with whom I wanted to build our own family.
My father’s advice was both shocking and
revelatory. It went against the grain of today’s “Walmart philosophy”, which is
if it doesn’t make you happy, you can take it back and get a new one.
No, a true marriage (and true love) is
never about you. It’s about the person you love—their wants, their needs, their
hopes, and their dreams. Selfishness demands, “What’s in it for me?”, while
Love asks, “What can I give?”
Some time ago, my wife showed me what it
means to love selflessly. For many months, my heart had been hardening with a
mixture of fear and resentment. Then, after the pressure had built up to where
neither of us could stand it, emotions erupted. I was callous. I was selfish.
But instead of matching my selfishness, Kim
did something beyond wonderful—she showed an outpouring of love. Laying aside
all of the pain and aguish I had caused her, she lovingly took me in her arms
and soothed my soul.
I realized that I had forgotten my dad’s
advice. While Kim’s side of the marriage had been to love me, my side of the
marriage had become all about me. This awful realization brought me to tears,
and I promised my wife that I would try to be better.
To all who are reading this
article—married, almost married, single, or even the sworn bachelor or
bachelorette—I want you to know that marriage isn’t for you. No true
relationship of love is for you. Love is about the person you love.
And, paradoxically, the more you truly love
that person, the more love you receive. And not just from your significant
other, but from their friends and their family and thousands of others you
never would have met had your love remained self-centered.
Truly, love and marriage isn’t for you.
It’s for others.
This post originally posted by
ForwardWalking.com, a website dedicated to helping people move forward in life.
