5 Needs In A Marriage

There are many needs expressed inside any marriage. While most of them are rather small, and can get away unaddressed for quite a long time, others are imperative. Failing to take in serious those few important needs often leads to unhappiness in marriage and even separation. We will introduce here five of the essential needs and try to understand

            Love

Although this is a sure cliché, you need love in your marriage in order to make the magic happen. Love can be an umbrella for a far broader array of feelings than we might initially suspect. Love can harbor inner and outer validation, altruism, the power to sacrifice yourself for the good of the other, and so on. Love is never easy to describe or put in a box. Taking numerous forms, many people mistake true love with something else. A mix of physical, emotional, and even mental love is needed in order to have access to the full list of features a marriage can extract benefit from. Love can be felt in each fiber of our body and the ones not receiving enough love can turn their back on family, society, and even life. The best place to nurture love at all levels is inside the protection offered by a marriage.

            Children

Although some might argue that children are optional in a marriage, it is hard to accept that idea. Children are the product of two people making an agreement to put aside personal interest and any existing differences for the sake of a third future person. It is not wrong to see children as an investment which will pay off in a near or more distant future. Far from being the duty to assure the survival of the specie, children are a projection in time of your love, a survival and the materialization of your feelings. Having children should become a priority in any marriage. A child can give purpose to a marriage failing to achieve convergence and can bring peace of mind.

Space

It might sound strange this third need, but it is there, alongside more traditional needs. Yes, the two forming a couple often need space between them in order to re-evaluate their roles, duties, responsibilities, as well as their expectations. Space can act in counterintuitive ways and actually bring people close together. Distance often fuels a lost love or desire, as you learn to appreciate the things you already have the moment they are taken away from you. Space can also be seen as trust and respect and the ability to put aside the need to control the life of your partner. A marriage should never consume your allowance of time and space needed for some more personal initiatives.

Time and patience

You might ask why the two needs come packed together on the fourth position. Time without patience is just stress, unrest, and a buildup of other negative emotions. As marriages are processes in time, they need time to unfold and reach their true potential. Although many consider time the ultimate test for a marriage, it’s better to see it as a sculpting force, able to reveal hidden potential. But sculpting with time is a delicate and often arduous job, which requires all the patience it can get. The lack of faith in time and the lack of patience towards the one you are sharing your life with are the main causes for marriage structural failure. They form the backbone, and when that is taken away, what is left can be more or less frail.

Honesty

Unfortunately, we will end the list of needs with another cliché. As we live in a social environment in which deceit, fraud, and faking are constants, knowing that your marriage can be a small bubble in which to de-activate your firewall is something of great comfort. As you go naked in the front of each other, your souls should also be naked, revealing all that is there to create pressure or unease. Honesty can be disguised in many ways, but it is ultimately the ability to be open about anything, not regarding the attached consequences. Although a big “politically correct” component is attached to any marriage, putting a lot of “make-up” on the truth, honesty should be seen as the counteracting force.