"you get the marriage you deserve"

[cod]

discuss

"That if you think yourself into a state of grace, you'll find yourself there. I take this to mean concentrating on the good things and the other person's good qualities. Doing considerate things for the other. Rather than, as Cod says, the endless tit for tat. "

i am really pleased i am not a lone voice on this
i think mn has a culture of tit for tat that si so wearing
more on htis mythgical state of grace please

Marriage is just about the only adult relationship where you have the opportunity to be completely gorgeous to someone for no reason.

Asolutely - I really believe this. I would perhaps change the word 'deserve' to 'create' (as sophable said a lot earlier I believe)

I take 'thinking yourself into a state of grace' as accepting what the other gives without wanting/wishing it were something else. Of course the flip side of that is trying to give the other person what they want.

All this pre-supposes you have two people who are trying to do the same thing. In that way you have a virtuous circle of accepting what is given in the true belief that the other person is doing the best they can to give you what you want/need. If you believe this and trust the other person 'tit for tat' in it's worst sense is unecessary.

If we come at it from the view that everything we give needs to be got back in some way - we can never reach this point - it's not possible.

All this of course requires goodwill on both parts and good communication. You can't even start to work out what someone might need/want without communicating with them about it. Obviously you also need enormous trust in each other to do this too.

Pretty difficult to do most of the time but fantastic if you can manage it even partially some of the time

Obviously there are some marriages/relationships (probably loads) where this is a ridiculous pipe dream - usually because one or both of the partners does not wish to or is unable to do the work involved or because the trust needed has been irrevocably broken.

I don't wish to sound too dreamy, but perhaps one needs to surrender to the 'unity' of marriage. That if one is making an effort to do x, y or z, in the relationship / around the house / socially / whatever, that one isn't doing it for the other person, per se, but for the team that you both belong to. Obviously it helps if you have a similar outlook on this. I've learnt a lot from my husband about handling conflict: he is very much one for not dwelling on the issue, but looking at how we get from bad situation A to good situation B and what we both need to do to achieve that. Rather than point-scoring or rubbing one's nose in mistakes.

I guess this is also part of Lazycow's 'virtuous circle'.

Anyway - even if you are tit-for-tatting, you might not realise all the things the other person does. I only discovered the other day that every morning he pulls [mainly my long] hair out of the bath plughole. Which is something that makes me retch. He is a nice man.

Ok Cod. I will have been married ten years next weekend, and find that it gets better and better. We fought a great deal in the first couple of years. we still fight now sometimes but there's so much history between us that we rarely get really angry. We have moved five countries in these ten years ( I am a trailing spouse) and consequently there's been a great deal of stress and loneliness to deal with, plus 2 children along the way. I find the best advice i have ever been given is not to expect your husband to solve all your problems. when i first moved to a strange country without knowing a soul, I expected my husband to find me friends, find me an exciting job, be entertaining and stimulating after a long day at the office.... I was such a wimp!

I now make an effort to find my own friends, my own work, and my own purpose in life without relying on him for everything. This in turn makes him more eager to do things for me.

Will that do, for a non-typical MN post?