Happiness frozen

Why did those who married for love cry later?

Everyone has a typical imagination of marriage before getting married. What is said in the oath is "to grow old together and never give up on happiness." Forever” may be what is called “married to love”.

But the reality is that data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs show that in the past 31 years, the marriage rate has declined for four consecutive years, and the divorce rate has increased for 15 consecutive years, an increase of 6.53 times. In the past five years, the phenomenon of late marriage has been obvious...

The most common words said by couples who come to the psychological consultation room are:

"I feel that our relationship is getting weaker and weaker"

"He cheated on him for the third time."

"I think she changed after getting married"...

When we see with our own eyes that couples go from the happiness of falling in love and getting married to dullness, indifference, and even They attack each other maliciously, hurt each other, and become exhausted in the end... We can understand why so many people are afraid of marriage.

Last week, I watched a documentary called "Happiness Freeze". One person spent 7 years following and filming the life processes of 8 couples falling in love, getting married, and having children.

This film changed my fear of marriage.

The inspiration for this film comes from the director's own real experience.

After getting married, he and his wife no longer talked so much. He hoped that he and his wife could go back to the way they had before getting married, having good and equal conversations every day.

'So he spent 7 years following and photographing 8 couples, ranging from professors, snack bar owners, white-collar employees, to artists, entrepreneurs, housewives...

He wanted to explore a truth in other people's marriages - why is there no longer passion in life after marriage?

The real harm in marriage is silence

In "Happiness Freeze" a wife asked her husband: "Do you talk to me for more than an hour every day?"

< p> The husband smiled and looked at her silently.

"You are always talking to your phone, and you don't know how to talk to me."

This detail reminds me of the time I went to a particularly romantic French restaurant. I was having dinner with friends in a restaurant, and a couple at the next table had been scrolling through their phones since they sat down.

The husband asked his wife: "What do you want to eat?"

The wife slowly raised her head and said, "You can order whatever you want." Then she continued to look down at her phone.

Sometimes they laugh, but they don't share what each other is watching. What surprised me the most was that when eating, both of them held chopsticks in their right hands and mobile phones in their left hands.

At that moment, I felt chills all over my body, and I felt a bottomless sense of loneliness flowing between these two people.

A marriage without response means no investment.

Without investment, there is no love.

Somerset Maugham bluntly stated the reason for the tragedy of love: the tragedy of love is not separation between life and death, but indifference.

I remembered the story of Tu Lei and his wife.

When Tu Lei first started to be a guest on "Defense of Love", it was in 2010. At that time, the program team paid wages in an envelope containing cash.

At that time, he was not famous yet and his salary was not much.

After the salary is paid, he always takes the envelope home and hands it to his wife as soon as possible. The wife will happily rush to hug her husband and say to him, "Thank you for your hard work."

But later, as the show became more and more famous, he made more and more money, and the envelope containing his salary became more and more bulging.

One day when he got the envelope back to his wife, she started crying while counting the bills one by one.

He asked her what was wrong in panic, and she said: "I see you making more and more money, and I feel that you are getting more and more tired from work, and we spend more and more time chatting together. The less..."

It was then that Tu Lei realized that he was only busy making money and spent too little time with his wife.

He didn't know how lonely she was.

Marriage must be based on

deep understanding of each other

Why do many couples become more and more silent after marriage?

Because they never really understood each other.

What impressed me most in "Happiness Freeze" was a professor couple.

They often have disputes because of the pressure of taking care of their parents and their differences in taking care of their children.

While discussing a sensitive issue, the husband suddenly picked up a chair and threw it to the floor, smashing it into pieces.

But at that moment, the wife suddenly felt that her husband was not angry at her, he was saying: "I really tried my best, I am very tired, can you understand me?"

So the wife did not get angry or fight back. She understood her husband’s feelings at that time:

“You who are angry at me at this moment, you who are out of control at this moment, are just begging me. "

So she looked at her husband quietly, waiting for him to calm down, as if to say: "I feel that you are really tired, and I want to bear it with you."

I understand you, so I don’t blame you.

At that moment, I felt strongly that the meaning of marriage is one person’s deep understanding and vision of another person.

I see you, your sadness, pain, happiness, and yearning. I understand why you are like this, and I am willing to stand with you.

Why do many people become “disillusioned” after getting married?

We have been subtly influenced by too many fantasy and beautiful love movies or novels since we were young. These fantasies have continued into our understanding of marriage. We believe that couples must be in tune with each other and have a tacit understanding, and that marriage must be perfect and happy. , for life.

"Even if I don't say it, you know what I'm thinking."

"You buy a house for me because you care about me."

"I will marry (Marrying) You just to live a happy life, you should give everything to me, dedicate yourself selflessly to me, and make me happy..."

I'm sorry, this is not love.

Psychologist Jung said that everyone has a "personality shadow".

Before becoming a couple, we were just one person, an independent individual.

The reason why we meet is because everyone is imperfect, and because the world is too lonely, too impetuous, and too complicated. We need to be seen and accepted by another person in order to be better. Live your life well.

We are together because others cannot see the real me, but you can.

So, don’t put those immature fantasies about love into your marriage.

No one is born to give, and no one can always meet your needs perfectly. We all have to learn humbly how to be a wife and how to be a husband in the long journey of marriage.

Later, the professor's wife in the documentary "Happiness Freeze" unfortunately got cancer - stage 3 liver cancer.

The proximity of death threats allows them to have more inner dialogues, the deeper and longer they are.

It was at the end of their lives that they truly began to understand each other.

I once saw a question on Zhihu: "What is it like for patients with depression to fall in love?"

There is an anonymous answer that is still engraved in my heart:

Later, they got married. As a person who fears marriage, I have to admit that this kind of moment really touches me.

Marriage does not look so beautiful on the surface, but it is also real enough.

After the accumulation of layers of experience, marriage will be refined into another emotion, an intimacy that is greater than love and may be closer to life.

As the psychologist Fromm said:

If I love another person, I should feel aligned with him and accept him for who he is, rather than asking him to be who I want him to be. so that I could use him as an object.

The best partner is

60-cent husband/wife

There is also a couple in the documentary who are typical middle-class people and are not short of money.

My husband drinks alcohol every day, goes out early and comes home late. Not only did he not help take care of the child, he also felt that the child seriously disturbed his sleep.

Finally one day, my wife broke out.

She cried bitterly and said to him: "I have done everything, I just asked you to help, and you are like this..."

Looking at their conversation, it has always been " I..." "You..." "I..." There is no team or collaboration in their relationship. It’s just you and me, never an “us”.

Someone asked me, don’t you think getting married is tiring? How good do you have to be to be a good partner? It seems like too much to pay.

I think that to be a good partner, 60 points is enough.

Psychologist Winnicott once said: "A mother with a score of 60 is the best mother."

Unlike a mother with a score of 100 who needs to respond to all your needs at all times, Trying to control you is not like a 0-score mother who is self-centered and ignores you.

A 60-point mother is someone who appears when you need her, fights side by side with you, and at the same time lets go and gives you enough space to explore your own life.

Isn’t that what a good partner is like?

Stop using "I'm too tired", "too busy at work" and "I can't help it" as excuses, and stop using "I only care about you" to control you.

Collaborate together when the other party needs it - such as childcare and housework; support the other party when the other party wants space for creation and travel. It is enough to be 60 points husband and 60 points wife.

The real name of marriage is not love

It is friendship

Among all the love stories I have ever seen, there is always one couple who makes me full of hope for marriage.

That's Chandler and Monica in "Friends."

They were best friends before and after marriage.

When Monica was distressed about her workplace relationship and said, "My boss doesn't like me," Chandler comforted her like a friend: "It's weird, my boss doesn't like me either."

When she felt that she could not get married, Chandler comforted her: "No, you will not become an old aunt."

When Chandler said a very " When no one responded to his "cold" jokes, Monica would comfort him like a friend by saying, "I was laughing."

She always supports him.

Even if he has reached middle age and wants to start from scratch and change his career.

She said: "I hope you can do the work you really like, rather than some difficult statistical analysis and data reconstruction."

When they decided to get married, Monica couldn't bear to spend Chandler's money on the wedding.

This reminds me of those stories about "they broke up before getting married because their names were not written on the house" and "the relationship failed after a seven-year relationship ended in a RV", and I find it extremely ironic.

In the best relationship, they are always each other's best teammates.

They don’t need to hold each other in their hands all day long, take care of each other all the time, and they don’t need a RV and a grand wedding as necessities for marriage, but they always say the same thing to each other: < /p>

"I support you, I will support you to the end."

Use the concept of "renewal once a year" to view marriage

After filming "Happiness Freeze", director Shen Keshang found a way to "have a good chat" with his wife:

"I thought about it later, the key is because I regard her as my wife, I think I will use it The way a husband communicates with his wife.

"So after editing "Happiness Freeze", I slowly changed my approach. When I see my wife when I go home every day, I keep telling myself that she is not my wife, she is my friend.

"If she were my friend, I would not want my friend to do anything, nor would I feel that my friend must do something right. I would think what my friend needs, and I would listen. Help if you can."

He also has a new understanding of the definition of marriage: "Rather than saying that marriage is a couple who lives together forever, I would rather believe that marriage is a cooperative relationship."

Staying together until old age is an unrealistic statement.

People cannot imagine what things will be like when they are 60 or 70 years old when they are in their twenties.

Compared with such obsession, what is more worthy of our thinking is: how do I face my marriage partner.

If you try to see each other by the standards of friends, treat each other as equals, and cooperate with each other, instead of looking at each other with an inherent evaluation method, what role should men play and what role should women play in the traditional framework? What role should you play to ask the other party, and your marriage will be much happier.

Shen Keshang said that we can try to use the concept of "renewal once a year" to think about marriage.

Do you like being with me? If you don't like it we can discuss it.

Do you like working with me? If things don't work well together we can discuss it.

Where can we improve, how can we adjust ourselves, how can we understand each other better and help each other better.

Only by redefining the relationship between each other can we face the so-called mother-in-law and daughter-in-law issues, child issues, time allocation issues, rights relationship issues, and economic intensity issues.

Only by getting along with different and new roles can marriage achieve a very romantic life.

Many people say that marriage is the grave of love.

I think this is because there is only love and no solid friendship.

In a beautiful marriage, there must be both love and friendship. Both parties are lovers and good friends.

If we let go of the wrong illusions about marriage, jump out of the original fixed framework, and are willing to use our identities as "good friends" to face, understand, respond, and support each other with our true selves, we may feel that marriage is It’s not that scary, and it’s worth trying.

Perhaps we should all learn from the existential psychology master Irving Yalom’s attitude towards love:

“The kind of love I dream of is one that two people enjoy. A passion to pursue a higher level of truth. Maybe I shouldn't call it love. Maybe its real name is friendship.