The Honeymoon Dilemma

“Life will be the finest journey when you get a partner that is understanding than a one that is loving.”

The world is full of people with different perspectives. With differing perspectives, building understanding is difficult. However, “Understanding” and “compatibility” are the two most crucial elements in relationships.

You instantly click with a person you meet, and without giving a second thought, you feel he is the right person for you. If there is no spark between you two in the first meeting, you think there is not an ounce of chance.

The black and white nature of judging relationships is faulty. Take your time. You are either good or bad. You are either up to a person's beauty standards or not. You suck at expressing, or you don’t.

Limiting anything to duality restricts us from adapting. In relationships, it acts as a poison.

People have a different outlook on how they perceive love. Children of broken families have always found their parents fighting on issues have a dull understanding of love. They have different expectations from their relationships. And those who are an output of a closely-knit family have expected something else out of their relationships.

“Priorities” and “Expectations” are complex subjects but go hand in hand with “love”.

There is a phenomenon very popular among young people finding love — “Love at First Sight”. I doubt there is anything like this. It’s a mere attraction to personality, style, or looks. The gruesome reality of such love — it dies out with the same momentum it started.

While priorities, expectations, compatibility, and understanding all have their part to play in building an everlasting bond, understanding clearly takes the lead.

Understanding Can Be Your Go-To Friend

The one thing that holds a relationship together is “Understanding”. Understanding is built over time. But the problem is most couples consider it a one-time pursuit.

Couples often want to build understanding on vacation after marriage. The most usual line I’ve heard, “We can get to know each other more.” “This vacation will help us bring closer” and other cliched lines copied from movies.

It makes sense the more time you spend with each other you can know a person inside out.

However, there is a minute problem with this. The setting to know each other is fabricated. It lacks reality. And the timing to go on a honeymoon is even worse.

Extravagance and Change Plays With Your Mind

The idea of going to a scenic place, staying in a fancy five-star hotel makes couples think they live in a fairytale. Spending the whole day together, eating out. Listening to their favorite song on the beach and reading books on the seaside. Expressing all day long how much you love each other. It all seems straight out of the fantasy world.

Life seems perfect with their spouse; they credit this to marriage. However, this fairytale notion is an outcome of a change and not because of marriage. It’s a temporary adrenaline rush, it’s gonna die out as soon as they exit that world.

In terms of timing, it can be a blunder. According to a survey by Qualtrics commissioned by LendingTree, nearly 45% of couples will take on debt to get married. The added cost of a honeymoon after marriage can make matters worse.

The average cost of a wedding in the US is $33,000 in 2017, without including the honeymoon. However, the mind-boggling finding is couples who get into wedding debt are more likely to consider divorce.

The most appropriate solution to a fairy tale is a humble beginning. Make your weddings an intimate affair, and schedule your honeymoon at a later time when you are financially stable.

Life will be better without a shaky start. Only if your relationship stays, you can enjoy multiple honeymoons together.

Mundanity Can Build the Best Bond

Well, the fabrication of the honeymoon setting and the financial burden can weaken your relationship even before it started. The other pivotal destroyer is the adrenaline rush.

After the dose of an adrenaline rush, when you are back in the real world, the thunderbolt of life struck.

When the beach view is out of sight, you are enclosed between concrete walls with a 9 to 5 waiting; life actually starts. Life is back, and also your marriage.

Things start to crumble one by one. Now, your busy schedule has no time to accommodate your better half. You should know marriage does not guarantee time. You start to think you are not valued enough. Even though it was always supposed to be like this. Nobody in the world has all the time to give you. The chapter of fairytale fantasy has ended.

The truth is our Life is ordinarily boring with a little thrill. It is not all gloomy and doomy, but it isn’t all fun and pleasure.

I assume marriage works on the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule. Your 80% of happiness is going to come from 20% of the happy moments. The rest are mundane life.

Couples fail to keep their relationship intact 80% of the time.

Spend the first six months of your marriage in the mundanity. It is what real life is going to be. Your vacations are embellishments to these mundanities. They let your relationship shine.

Knowing someone through the lens of mundane life is the best way to know your partner.

On a Final Note

Before marriage, it is merely a race of impressing each other. You can impress someone with good looks and small talk, but not for long. The curtains are immediately down once you start living together. It would help if you accepted one other with their flaws, and the real, raw life will help you like each other irrespective of the flaws. That is when the bond truly builds and flourishes lifelong.

A smart way to maintain your relationship and bond, in reality, is to stay away from vacation for the first six months of marriage. Daily life acquaints you with the lifestyle of your partner.

Later, when you go on a honeymoon, it will be more substantiative. After you have been on a diet for months, having brownies is much more gratifying than when you are already high on sugar.

Once the tools holding a relationship together are discovered, sustaining your marriage will be a little easier.

When you reach the phase of honeymoon, you would not be starting from page one. But somewhere in the middle of the book where you are familiar with the characters thoroughly.

Life and relationship will then be more predictable and real.