Does it matter? Does it matter if you are in love with the person you are married to?

Does it matter if you are in love with the person you are married to? Or do you just need understanding?

Preity Randhawa explores this question here.

A whole lot of people in today’s world are married to one they are not in love with. Maybe due to family pressure, maybe due to society or maybe due to the fact that the person they married is what other people wanted for them and they went along with it. Maybe the other person looks like the ‘ideal’ type – from society’s standards. They’ve got a great respected career, they come from an ideal family, they pray every single day, they’ve got every single thing in them that is great if your ticking boxes on a page for ‘ideal partner’. Your family, your friends and just about everyone is so happy that you married them!

But the question here is can you spend the rest of your life with another human being that you are not ‘in love’ with. I can firmly say that yes you can. A lot of people are doing - but the question is not whether you can or not, the question is whether you should? Are you truly happy? Looking deeper into the question, more questions arise: here’s a list of questions to ask yourself:

Does it matter questions?:

· Does it matter if you don’t see the world in them?

· Does it matter if you and are constantly looking around for other attractive people?

· Does it matter if you are constantly thinking about/checking up on your ex/ex’s or the one that you were truly in love with

· Does it matter if you’re not excited at work to go home and see them?

· Does it matter that when you’re with your friends you just forget about them?

· Does it matter that whenever you see them you don’t want to rip their clothes off?

· Does it matter that you don’t feel that ‘warmth’ of love in your heart?

· Does it matter that when they say they are going away for a few days to visit family you actually feel relieved and like you are now free to do what you want?

· Does it matter that you lied to them because you went to see an ex?

Here’s my take on this:

Yes, it matters. It matters that when you look at the person you’re married to you should see your world inside of them. It matters that when you are with them you only have eyes for them and not anyone else. It matters that you don’t fancy anyone else because you are completely crazy about them. Yes, it matters that when you’re not with them you are thinking about them – at least at the back of your mind. It matters that after a long day at work you can’t wait to go home and see them! It matters that when you’re with your friends you are missing them and thinking about them – planning in your head when you’re going to see them next and planning the next date. It matters that when you come home after a long day from work you want to rip their clothes off. It matters that when you are out eating in a restaurant together you are looking at them as if you can’t wait to take them home and rip their clothes off. It matters that when you look at them you see them as the most beautiful/attractive human being on the planet – even if logically you know they are not – to you they are. It matters that you forget to eat because you were busy making love for hours on end. It matters that you can lay in bed with the other person for 6 hours just laughing, making love and telling stories. It matters that no matter where you are you can enjoy their company - even if you're doing absolutely nothing. It matters that you think they are sexiest human being on the planet. It matters that you can laugh with them as much as you like about things that you wouldn't tell anyone else because your scared you'll be judged. It matters that you can tell them things about your past and life and know they won't judge you because they're also not perfect. It matters that when you think about them or anything to do with them theirs a warmth in your heart. It matters that when you see them you have a twinkle in your eye. It matters that sometimes- just sometimes you just can't stop staring at them. It matters that it feels like you’ve come ‘home’ and you’re not still looking around for others to fulfill you. It matters that you don’t lie to that person because you actually went to see someone else. It matters that you can talk to them sitting in one place for hours on end about various topics and not get bored. It matters that after you cut the phone on them, you want to speak to them again. It matters that when you go away from them you miss them and can't wait to see them. It matters that when you think of them it brightens not only your day but also your life in general. It matters that everything seems better with them in your life. It matters that when you see them you are filled with passion for them. Yes, these things matter. And if you’ve ever been in love with someone you know that effort isn’t effort at all- the things that you may feel are an effort to do with your marriage partner now – you did all those things effortlessly with the one you were in love with once upon a time. Acts of romance, passion and lovemaking weren’t ‘duties’ that you had to do – you wanted to do them with the one you were in love with. Do you remember? If things are starting to feel like ‘duties’ in your marriage – for example. ‘I must pick up my partner from work’, ‘I must make love to my partner tonight’, ‘I must keep them happy’ Or ‘I should buy them flowers’ ‘I should take them out tonight’ etc. etc. then you need to question why.

You are not doing a business deal or partnership here – You are looking to the human being that you are going to spend countless hours – nights and days with for the rest of your life. The human that you are going to have children with. The children that you are going to bring up together. The holidays that you are going to go on together – where there’s only you and that person. You can lie to yourself and say you love them – and perhaps you do love them – but are you in love with them? If you have spent weeks, months or years with one person it’s very hard NOT to love them – yes you may love them, it is possible to also love your family, your friends and even acquaintances and you may even tell yourself that the love you feel for your partner is a different kind of love – but if you have any doubt when asking yourself the question: ‘Am I truly madly in love with this person’ – if there’s even an inkling of doubt then you need to stop lying to yourself.

The reason so many people start having affairs is that they knew from a long time ago that they weren’t in love with their partner – either anymore or they never were. Just because you marry someone doesn’t automatically justify being in love with that person. Many factors play a part in this – especially in the more Asian cultures – where factors such as family pressure and society pressure play a huge role.

If you find yourself constantly thinking about your old flames or exes or trying to check what they’re up to or even desiring to see them just so you can feel a tiny bit of emotion/passion which you felt in your past then you need to question why.

If you had even a small taste of being in love with someone in this lifetime you know what it feels like - which means you also KNOW for sure when you don't feel the same way for the person you're married to. And yes if you got to experience being in love with someone you are very lucky as not everyone does.

I do believe that the experiences that meant the most to us in this lifetime are the ones that we keep recreating in our minds and find ourselves wanting to feel the same passion we had once felt.

Ask yourself the question that after 20 years of marriage with this person are you going to feel like you lived the best years of your life? Or are you going to feel like you agreed to a partnership because it was ‘the right thing to do’ at the time and it made everyone else happy.– Make sure you’re living for you and not for others. Do what makes you happy and not what family or society wanted you to do. Because there are two things that you can never get back – time and life.

And you know what the most tragic thing of all is… lying to yourself that you’ve never experienced being in love with anyone so you don’t have to face the fact that you’re not in love with the person you’re waking up to every single day.

Too many of us are living lives of quiet misery, we set the bar of happiness so low that we lie to ourselves every single day that this is OK. Life is very much too short to live with just OK. And even if you know that you would never be able to leave the situation or person that you are with due to many circumstances – family, society, pressure, you don’t want to hurt the one you’re married to; the truth is that we shouldn’t lie to ourselves.

We can lie to the world, to others, to society, to family even, BUT we should never lie to ourselves. Because the only thing worse than staying with someone you are NOT in love with is lying to yourself every single day for the rest of your life.

I speak the truth – Preity xo