Marriage

Gang and I are celebrating our fourth anniversary this Friday. Four years have passed since we registered in Beijing and changed marriage statuses on Facebook from "dating" to "married". Four-year is long enough to change a person's life. A student can become a professional, a junior professional can be promoted to a senior level, and newlyweds may walk around with baby strollers after four years. Sometimes the beginning is not a good predictor for the end: I was a civil servant four years ago, consulting for Chinese government in Beijing, but now a jobless new graduate across the Pacific. 


A lot happened in the last four years in our marriage too. Before we got married, Gang and I had a one-year long distance relationship when he was doing a master degree at Columbia Univ. He flew back to Beijing and stayed there for one month soon after we decided to get married. But it was a painful month. I started to realize the big difference between us, which was unobservable when we were thousands of miles away, but uncovered immediately when we moved together. No solution was found after endless talk, conversation and even quarrels. One month passed quickly, he left Beijing for California, leaving me to wonder how my marriage would be like. That was probably the most painful time since I got married. Things were getting better afterwards. Conflicts still happened, but were mostly well resolved. We no longer make same mistakes.


Everyone learns something from marriage. For new couples who haven't lived together before marriage, there are more to learn. Though some people are against premarital cohabitation, I find it a great idea. If you decide to live with someone for the rest of your life, it's better to check whether you guys are able to handle the problems in marriage before making the big decision. And the best way to do so is to live with him/her before marriage, called "trial marriage" in some places. I can't recall very well how we finally figured out a good way to compromise, but risks did exist that we might not find a good solution to marital problems. So a risk-averse person who is also serious about marriage may want to spend some premarital time together with his/her date.


Once you understand that people think quite differently, it's easier to handle marital problems. Just like I won't buy myself a camera costing thousands of bucks, Gang won't spend hundreds on purses: we have different indifference curves. Every time when I asked for Plan A but Gang wanted Plan B, Gang always got confused about why I insisted Plan A while Plan B was "obviously better/more reasonable". And I got upset because my husband didn't give up the stupid plan though it made me unhappy already - did he really love me?! We are not alone. A few days ago, I read an article about conflicts in marriage, and the reasons mentioned there are much more ridiculous. A couple divorced because they couldn't agree on where to squeeze the toothpaste tube- from the middle or the end? And another couple quarreled for years over how to make fried rice - fry eggs first or the rice? You see, there is no way to find out a "right" solution when there are two judges. In a marriage, as long as you are able to find a solution, it is a good solution.


All that said, I always appreciate that Gang is here, as a part of my life, always understanding and supporting me.  We came to this world alone (except twins, triplets...), and not everyone is lucky enough to find the one he/she loves and feel beloved. When two people fall in love, they're probably not prepared for all the possible problems in their future marriage. But love helps people better handle these issues, though not always successfully. New couples should be blessed, not only for this big decision they've just made, but also for the long way ahead of them, which is filled with love and joy, but also decorated with bitterness and pain.