How to choose the right partner for yourself? ( Archived) (6)

The abundance of breakups and divorces proves that mostly our choices were wrong.
Is it always our partner's fault in breakups and divorces, nothing ours?

I don't know about wrong. Is everything wrong that doesn't last forever? Nothing lasts forever, you know. In the old days life was nasty, boring and short, it didn't take so much to keep people together. Put it another way, the choices you make today would have to be a lot less wrong than the oldendaysers.

I would say normally it is the fault of the one who decided to break up, or the one who had an affair. Often one person tries to make it work, and the other does not try at all. People expect love to just happen, as if by accident, and then when they break up, it is also something that just happened, by accident. I think the relationships that last are the ones where both people choose to commit to making it last.

Many people say it is wrong to break up, and stay together no matter how miserable they are. Others say it is wrong to stay together, and be so miserable. No one seems to be saying that what is really wrong, is to not love the person they are with, as they promised to do in the marriage vow. The moment you tell yourself you no longer love that person, is the moment you have broken your marriage vow.

If you believe you can not control whether or not you love, than taking the marriage vow is a lie for you. To take the marriage vow, without lying, you must believe you are capable of choosing to love that person your whole life. You must believe you are in control of whether or not you love.

Having a lasting marriage is not about choosing the right partner. Some couples are very similar to each other, and others are complete opposites, and others are somewhere in between. There is no evidence that shows any difference in success rates, for when opposites marry and when similar people marry. So it is not about the right partner at all.

What matters is whether or not both people make the effort to make it last. Whether they abide by the marriage vows.

So, there's a tiny little bit about choosing the right partner. Most important is choose someone who will abide by the marriage vow, in choosing/committing to love for life. Obviously, that requires an honest person. Then there's other important factors, such as both need to agree on whether or not they will have kids. Rural/city living preference might be important. If your heart is set on living in a commune or something, you might want to make sure to find someone who has the same goal.

Tony