The Secret Ingredient to A Successful Marriage

Editor's Note: Dear IL'ites, ankita has shared some wonderful facts on what makes a marriage stronger and is featured here. Please have a look and share it with your friends. ankita, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us. It has been chosen as the best of forums. Congratulations!

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This is in response to a call-for by Induslady here - http://www.indusladies.com/forums/married-life/245441-what-wives-can-do-strong.html#post3133734

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I got you with that headline. Didn't I?

Who doesn't want to know that. The truth is, there are several things that make up a successful marriage. I want to put the spotlight on one quality that towers over everything else, from my personal experience. And that is..

...empathy.

It is easy to list down a quality and say its important. But that won’t drive home the point. So, I want to illustrate with an example.

It happened just after my first kid was born. I was having post partum blues and severe anxiety. I would be awake till 3am in the morning, thinking about all sorts of crazy things, imagining a worse-case scenario and cry.

My hubby is a deep sleeper and he didn’t notice it for a few days. One day, he woke up in the middle of the night and he saw me awake.

He asked me, “What’s going on?". And, I said, "I am unable to sleep. I don’t know what to do for breakfast tomorrow." He said, “Seriously? Is that a big thing. Just go to bed”. He then dozed off. He woke up 15 minute later and saw me crying.

He asked again, “What’s the matter?”. And, I said, “I really don’t know what to make for breakfast tomorrow”. That is when some light bulb went on for him. He understood what I was going through. He realized that I am worrying about all these small things not out of choice, but out of hormonal causes that are beyond my control. He empathized.

Because he empathized, he understood that just brushing aside this or rationally explaining why this is not such a big deal isn’t going to help me. He woke up fully, both of us sat on the bed and started talking. And this is literally how our conversation went..

He - “Why don’t we have cereal for breakfast?”
Me - “That is what we have been having all week”
He - “I like cereal. You just had a baby. I can do cereal”
Me - “No, I don’t want to do cereal”
He - “Ok, what about Omlette?”
Me - “I have only one onion”
He - “What about Omlette without Onion”
Me - “That won’t taste good”
He - “Ok, what about Oatmeal”
Me - “We just had that day before yesterday”

This conversation went on for literally 2 hours. Yes, friends, 2 hours! At 4am in the morning, we went to bed. He slept, only after making sure that I was asleep.

The following week, he told me that having a change of scenario to break the routine would make me feel better. He took me on a week long vacation. That acted as the definitive point when I turned the page and got rid of the anxiety and postpartum blues forever.

This happened 9 years ago. I have an intense affection for him, just thinking about this incident and how much he empathized with me during some of my troubling periods.

Obviously, he isn’t this empathetic all the time. But even if he is empathetic just during a few defining moments, the mileage from that goes a long time in marriage. Empathy goes a long way.

And, we had cereal for breakfast.

Ankita

 

Thanks friends for the likes and comments. Found an interesting and short (2.5 minutes) video on empathy. Hope you all like it.
RSA Shorts - The Power of Empathy - YouTube