Marital Tactics
Muzaffer Ahmad
Marriage is an art. It needs to be studied and read about. We are not born great husbands and wives, we have to learn from the experience of other married couples and from books and experts in the field. An important principle is understanding the other’s needs. As the saying goes: “Understand your spouse and you’ll find peace”, just because understanding will lead to comfort. With regards to this discussion, there is an excellent book titled “The 5 languages”.
The book likens love to a gas tank that you fill it up. In whatever way, after a day or two it will become empty, and then again it needs to be refilled, and this process goes on and on. Every person has a favorite language of love and there are five languages to express love with. You start communicating in the same language, there is no marriage without trust, there is no trust without openness. This openness should happen monthly or quarterly or at least annually or once in a lifetime. There are couples who have not ever spoken honestly to each other, each partner hides whatever bothering them. Sociologists use the term “hidden divorce”, which happens when the couple are married on the surface, but they are actually as if divorced. That is, they could be socially and legally married and share the same living space, but they are spiritually, emotionally, and mentally separate. One of the main causes is the absence of communication. By communication, it means speaking in a way that the recipient could understand the message being conveyed. If that does not happen then there will be a gap and if there is a gap then there will be conflict.
A secret to a successful and happy marriage is for both partners to reach a point where they accept the other’s flaws and drawbacks. Reaching this point, many unhappinesses between couples could disappear. It is said that a successful marriage is not upon your love for what makes the other person special, but upon your acceptance of their flaws. It is very easy to love what is good about another person, but a relationship is not only built on positive points; it actually is built upon acknowledging that they have flaws because no one is perfect. Simply put, it is about accepting one another as whole.
Around 20 years ago, divorce rates in Malaysia reached 33%. That is, a third of total marriages would end up with divorce. This percentage is very close to that in some other area today, but there also are countries with a divorce rate reaching as high as 50%. But what did Malaysia do to address the issue? Any couple who are planning to tie the knot have to get a marriage license, for which they have to go through marriage trainings. It is just like the procedures you will need to take while applying for a driving license: taking trainings and demonstrating that you are capable of driving safely on the streets. Only after receiving an approval from marriage trainers, one could proceed. With the implementation of the plan, divorce rats went down in Malaysia.
Today Malaysia has one of the lowest divorce rates worldwide. They went from 33% to just 8% today. It could be a significant move to follow such a program in other areas with high rate of divorce. Putting in place curriculum and educational program for couples before they get married would teach them to bear differences while acknowledging common grounds. Even in the case of a divorce under such a program, couples could simply call their separation an amicable divorces, which helps them still respect each other despite an inevitable divorce.
The majority people are like oil and water — they do not mix well but they flow together; they fit one another other in the craziest counterintuitive way and they complete each other! When you learn to love someone you learn to live with them separate but equal, and that is the truth behind every successful love story.
