How to Build a Happy Marriage

A clear-cut tendency is observed today: neither men nor women are in a hurry to marry. The growing independence of women, reluctant to do all housework and bear the main burden of children's upbringing, sacrificing career growth, is one of the causes of the changes in family formation. A happy marriage may be built only on love, tolerance, mutual understanding, equality, and respect. The problem is important because materially both husband and wife are now in many cases on equal terms. More and more women demonstrate higher levels of education than men, More and more women compete with men, holding leadership positions in business, politics and social life. As the result, women become materially independent. They are not materially tied to a family anymore. When they marry, they enrich their world that is now built on kinship, love, safety, quality leisure time activities in which all family members are involved. A family develops a collective feeling of interconnectedness, which is opposed to loneliness. Joy and duty, love and care, discipline and kindness - all these are taken together in a family as a pillar of stable social development. I have talked to married people in search of a "happy family" recipe. I want to share some of my findings with you.

A happy marriage is based on intimacy and commitment. It is a bond that outgrows passion as the feature of romantic love. It is a bond that is based on mutual respect and the feeling as if both husband and wife were in many respects one. It is a way of constructing lifestyle, emphasizing intimate relationship and devotion to a person of your choice. It is confidence in the stable character of marriage, reinforced by having kids. Although even happy marriages tend to undergo changes, they never change the high quality of relating to each other. People are happy to be together, to share opinions, to spend time together, to make plans, which is inherent in their attitudes to each other.

Happy marriages are