Take your time and read this.
After investing tremendous emotional, physical and financial energy in a wedding, newly wedded couples hope to retire into a life of bliss. In any given case, the honeymoon is deemed as a perfect first step into their happily ever after.
However, despite all the romance and excitement, couples grudgingly find themselves returning to unexciting everyday life. Some time after the wedding, things begin to feel really different, and not for the better.
As Evelyn Waithera attests, therein lies the spoiler called post-wedding blues.
“I was extremely happy to have made a remarkable step in my life. But after the wedding and the honeymoon, a peculiar sense of loss gripped me,” she says.
Evelyn confides that although her husband was still the same nice guy she’d married, she now missed her single life and the freedom it gave her.
“I missed going out and chatting endlessly with my pals (of both genders). After getting married, I could no longer hang out without feeling guilty.”
Perception
It did not help matters that her husband, Patrick Irungu, was in the same boat. He desperately longed for the weekend treats of the past.
“I was a different man who they couldn’t fit in with,” he says. “They speedily excluded me from their escapades and drinking sprees.”Ironically though, the boys he missed so much did not seem that interested in being with him.
Gradually, Patrick began to feel isolated and ‘alone’ and he craved his lost bachelor days. The thought that he would be stuck with his new partner for the rest of his life somewhat made him feel depressed – something he never thought could happen when he put a ring on her.
Apparently, the wedding vows change more than just the status of your relationship: they change you and your perception.
For Teresiah Mugure, it was her spouse’s decision that she would be responsible for cleaning since she was the woman that incensed her.
“I thought housework would be shared. But after we got married, he changed and couldn’t do certain things like washing or ironing since he considered them ‘female work’, yet, he’d done them before,” she says.
To avoid trouble, Teresiah hired a house-help. Ultimately, she found herself changing the way she used to do things in order to fit into her husband’s way of running things. This did not come easily.
“My new marriage nearly collapsed,” she says.
Evidently, some of changes that come with the married life can be quite difficult to deal with. According to Ken Peter Munyua, a senior counselling psychologist at Valley of Hope Counselling Services, “married people have commitments and responsibilities while single people have fun and ‘unlimited’ freedom.”
He observes that unlike dating, building a happy and fulfilling marital life does not happen overnight.
“All successful couples take a lot of time to adjust and get used to things,” Ken advises. This was especially true for Eunice Wanjugu.“Our rubber hit the road almost immediately after our honeymoon,” she recalls. “We seemed to disagree frequently on the same issue: money. My hubby was quite extravagant while I preferred to save.”
Discord
This financial discord began to affect other aspects of their life: “The more we argued the less intimate we became. The marriage felt dry and empty, like we had made a mistake in walking down the aisle.”
Ken notes that while money is the cause of most rows between couples, sex is the cause of resentment.
Not even couples who have stayed together before finally getting married are immune to post-wedding blues. According to family therapist Edward Okumu, the best way to avoid these blues is to “talk things out way before getting married”.
Nonetheless, it is never too late to make right what has been done wrong. This not only bridges your differences but brings you closer.
For Eunice, starting afresh was what worked for her: “We sat down with an older couple and sought a middle ground for our approach to finances,” she says. “We also made sex a priority.” Source: the Standard
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