Happy Family Book. How to stay happy in marriage. Irina Bjørnø
will talk later about love. It is an important issue, and usually misunderstood but we will make it clear.
Remember! We are all food to each other’s life! Another person (your partner) helps to nourish your body, mind and soul with different foods: emotions, experiences, impressions, and events. All of this forms your body, mind, and soul. All this helps you to fulfill your dreams. You become that special person due to all of the inputs. Wrong input – wrong results (bad health, unhappiness) like in computer business: rubbish in – rubbish out. And this process is mutual: you are also responsible for the active development of your partner. It is a daily, continuous job and a very pleasant one because you can see the results everyday.
But what if you have already met somebody? How do you check it is the right person for you? Answer the same questions as you did before to find you dream partner but this time, in addition to your dream picture, list also the qualities of your present spouse (you can use a different colored pen). Are the answers about your present partner very different from those about your dream prince/princess? Be honest with yourself!
If you have been in several short-term relationships, check again: do I find this quality in my former partner: say yes/no. If the “NO” answers dominate, ask the question: why do you fall into the same trap again? Where is your weak compromise point? And DO NOT repeat it again! Learn form your mistakes!
You will be rewarded in the future with a healthy and long lasting beautiful relationship!
And what if you are in a serious relationship now? Or you are still dreaming about the right person? Come back and answer all these questions yourself. Make a new evaluation a week later. Do I find this quality in my present partner? (Say honestly: Yes or No). If the “NO” are the majority answer, he/she is definitely NOT your dream partner. What do you do? Make the right conclusion from your research.
A lot of people who were in therapy with me were divorced later because they found out that they had betrayed their dreams. And when you kill your dreams, you kill part of yourself. Now most of my patients live happily alone or in couples, but they have learnt to respect themselves and their dreams.
2. Marriage: tradition or biological need? Is it the way to be happy?
Do you need to be married? Whose need is it? The society’s? To create workers in order to support the society’s existence? Or is it your parents’ dream? Or maybe, it is the pressure of your social surroundings, your friends, your colleagues? Clarify it for yourself before it is be too late!
Look around! How many of your married friends are really happy? What about your parents or your relatives?
How many happy couples do you know?
Leo Tolstoy (who was very unhappy in his family life) wrote in his novel “Anna Karenina”: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. What I can say?
Happiness is the individual state of being, which is achieved (temporarily), when your criteria to be happy are fulfilled: it is so easy! But the criteria of happiness are different from person to person and vary during the course of a lifetime. It is dynamic and it changes together with the person’s individual development!
What most people wish for in their life is to be happy. For one, it means to have a wedding with 200 guests, for another to climb Everest. Everybody is different, but one thing is in common the state of happiness cannot be permanent. As the Chinese proverb says: Nothing is permanent but change! If you achieve it once you will wish to repeat it again. We will talk about it later. You will learn how to stay in a happy marriage AND satisfy your need for variety. Be patient!
I met one person among my clients whose criteria to be happy included among other things the cleanliness of water glasses in his home: a small drop of moisture on the glass created a total state of irritation and influenced his feelings of happiness. You can say that it is small beer, but for this person it WAS a real problem.
Now you are ready to create the next practical instruments:
My criteria of happiness:
You know the procedure now: Take a piece of paper, stop watch (20 minutes), good pencil, 3 deep breaths and:
Let it happen! Create your list for happiness.
I feel happy when:
Start writing everything that can make you happy (if you dream about it): What should happen to make you feel happy? What are the necessary conditions? Who is necessary? What is necessary?
Work hard! DO not think too much! Write! Are you stuck? Here is a little guide to help you:
I feel happy when I am involved in:
Relationships
Activities (doing something specific)
Hobbies
Success
Finished? Fine! Put your list aside until next weekend. And again: do not talk about it to anybody, do not show it to anyone: let the idea of happiness crystallize inside you.
The following weekend, you know what to do:
Open your answer sheet again, read it carefully, corrects some of it and mark a score against each item: 1 – very important, essential, 2 – important, but not 100%, 3 – not essential, can be dropped.
Now the work is done!
On a new page, write again only the qualities which are very important for your happiness now (remember, that after one year the situation could be different!) and at the end, write the qualities you may include in your list for happiness, but they have not such a high priority now (score 2). Is it marriage? Draw your conclusions.
3. Love and family. Myth and reality
Every language reflects the level of development of the whole nation (cultural, social and spiritual). Primitive nations have a very simple language to describe some complicated ideas, but it can also be very developed to describe very specific things, which have a special value in their society. For example, the Bedouin language has 40 different words for camel, and the Greenland Inuit language lists 30 different words for snow. It only shows that language reflects the stage of development and meets the needs of each nation or society at a specific time. Language is a communication tool and the mirror of the “nation’s consciousness” for groups of people who have common tasks to solve and therefore a need for communication.
The ancient Greek society was very developed in many aspects, including at the level of philosophy. In the Greek language, there are 4 words for Love:
Everybody is familiar with the first one: Eros. Eros can be explained as sexual passion, or by using biology terminology, we can describe Eros as the hormonal (natural) love from nature’s side. Eros appears when people feel the need to have sex. Eros and sex are coupled together. Eros (the hormone cocktail in your blood) is the physical attraction of two bodies to create a new life. Eros can be controlled from the human side, but it takes a special education and skills to do it. Eros changes with the variations of the sexual hormone level inside your glands. Eros blinds people and they do not see the reality: they only want to satisfy their sexual desire. Eros is in our bloodstream, not in our mind. Eros is NOT intelligent but very primitive, for example some well respected people (i.e. B. Clinton) demonstrate it. Eros comes and goes. You cannot build a relationship based upon Eros. But you can enjoy the state, which Eros gives you: the sexual attraction with somebody to share the body experience. Eros is about you, not your partner,