The Five Best Reasons to Get Married!

By Laura Lee Carter

If you are good at working out your differences, you share common interests, and your partner fills your needs and not just your wants, perhaps you should consider making this relationship more permanent. If you desire the same kind of lifestyle in your future, and you make each other feel special in the long term, marriage may be a good choice for you.

HOWEVER, if you’re marrying to escape family or personal problems, if you’re simply infatuated, or expecting marriage to solve your personal problems, forget it.

You are living in a dream world that does not exist in reality.

YOU MUST RESOLVE YOUR OWN PERSONAL PROBLEMS BEFORE YOU BRING SOMEONE ELSE INTO YOUR LIFE.  THEY CANNOT SOLVE THEM FOR YOU.   This is called self-responsibility. Be completely honest.

Ask yourself NOW:

Would you want to marry yourself, knowing your deepest challenges?

Do you struggle with self-esteem issues or depression? Your new partner cannot fix those for you. They will only tire of dealing with them constantly. Worse, you will probably unconsciously choose a partner with similar issues.

I have discovered that there is a strange form of justice in relationships: YOU GET WHAT YOU ARE, so spend time working on yourself.

Remember, marriage can never resolve any of your own personal problems, it will probably only magnify them in the long run.     You will only be bringing more problems into the relationship, problems you alone can solve through counseling, or some other form of intense personal work on yourself and your self image.

These are the reasons I remained alone for four years after my own divorce, to work on my self-esteem and re-learn how to love myself. Grieving the divorce and the mistakes I made in my past, made me more ready to recognize and appreciate new love when it arrived at my door in 2005.  Lots of personal work and running my own dating service also helped!

Read How To Believe In Love Again to learn more about how this transition occurs!

Laura Lee Carter, MA Counseling Psychology, the writer behind the popular online blog How to Believe in Love Again, has been helping others turn midlife difficulties into opportunities for personal change since 2007. Besides working as a psychotherapist, Laura Lee has authored a number of books and e-books on midlife transformation.  Don’t miss her new book: Find Your Reason to Be Here: The Search for Meaning in Midlife. Follow her on Twitter: @midlifequeen.