Working And Winning

To achieve the aims you want, you usually have to work for them, but not always as the following story shows.

As the above story shows, achieving an aim does not come merely by working for it. Your aim in reading this book is presumably to achieve a happy long lasting relationship. But good or bad luck can play a part and make your aim difficult to achieve. You may be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. You or yours may have some physical impediment, incapacity or illness for which there are few palliatives and no cure and which you feel is not going to endear you to prospective partners.

What You Have, You Hold

When you cannot get what you want, however much you hope and work for it, relax, take stock. Assess what you have already gained or done. Look at all your successes, small though they seem. Give yourself a pat on the back for those achievements, however minor. Your life is not over yet, though it may feel like it – and who knows what the future holds? Perhaps you can change your lifestyle, alter your daily routine, take up a new hobby, or even exercise a bit for greater fitness, health and a more optimistic outlook?

If you are suffering from stress or pain caused by meeting the wrong person or parting from what seemed the right one, maybe you can use your experience to help others in the same boat. Diana, Princess of Wales, made what eventually proved an unfortunate marriage, but using her style, grace and beauty, used the platform provided by that marriage to do the good works that endeared her to millions. Nobody could have seen her funeral without realising how her life had touched people all over the globe.

In the final analysis, what cannot be cured must be endured. For the moment console yourself with the old adage, that where there’s life, there’s hope.

Good looks sometimes help the possessor to find the right partner, but not always. The unsophisticated possessor of good looks is sometimes unaware of the effect he or she has on others and so can be led into dangerous byways closed to the less well endowed. Success in marriage (by which I mean a lifelong partnership that provides mutual love and help, and more gladness than sadness) rarely depends on good looks. People who are not particularly good looking or who are physically or mentally disadvantaged need love as much as the fit and handsome and can maybe give even more.

Marriage Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint

Success in marriage is like running a marathon. It needs effort and the will to survive the distance. No runner wants to have DNF (‘did not finish’) recorded against his entry for any event. Divorce or the breaking up of a partnership is in effect a DNF marking.

Some marriages and relationships are doomed to a DNF finale right from the beginning. They are made too hastily, or when a couple are too passionately embroiled to consider the longer term consequences of their actions. When partners in a relationship don’t stay the course it is usually because if things get difficult, as they always do, it’s easier to get out than stay put.

Another reason for a marital break-up in today’s climate is that one of the two parties may disappear and never be seen again. Most DNF cases, however, are due to disagreements which mount up over apparently trivial incidents. Other than those resulting from violence, these can usually be overcome or sorted out if the desire to do so is there. And with the right partners, they will be. So, assuming your aim is to be one of a couple, rather than a ‘single’, and you are looking for a partner rather than a friend, you have to find first of all, the ‘right’ person. And that generally means a spouse, for though you may dally on the way to the altar, marriage is invariably the best option if children are planned. More about marriage versus cohabiting is to be found in Chapter 9.