Getting Married Separately? The Challenges of Starting a Long-Distance Marriage

Getting Married Separately? The Challenges of Starting a Long-Distance Marriage

More and more couples are beginning their married life working in different cities or with incompatible schedules. Hope isn’t enough: it takes realism, generosity, and courageous decisions to nurture the relationship from the beginning.

Getting married isn’t always easy. Access to stable employment, affordability, the cost of living, and other circumstances make it difficult to get married financially.

Therefore, it is increasingly common for couples to marry when they both find work, even if the jobs are in different cities.

Marriage counseling consultations are increasing among couples who, after only a short time together, are beginning to experience problems because they rarely see each other, because their jobs are far apart, and they practically only see each other on weekends and perhaps a few days during the week.

The same thing happens when we encounter couples who work one day and the other at night, or in jobs that require spending long periods away from home.

They get married with great excitement, but the lack of communication causes the spark to fade.

Work – the inability to change and the feeling of being tied down – causes a kind of helplessness to take hold of the couple.

Having children becomes complicated, and you begin to see no way out of the situation, with the resulting stress that this situation generates.

The shadow of failure appears on the horizon.

From the outside, things look very simple, but they also look more perspective.

You need to think carefully and seek advice before making a decision in situations like the ones I described above, which, as I said, are becoming more frequent and are causing more problems.

Life itself isn’t easy, so adding these add-ons is taking unnecessary risks.

Happiness is at stake. Solutions can be found, and most of the time there are. It would be wise to look for them before getting married. Don’t risk everything on the illusion you have.

The solution always requires losing something in the short term to ensure the long term.

Changing jobs or moving to a new city can be a solution. Obviously, it comes at a cost to your financial and material well-being, but prudence in cases like these is advisable.

You have to be creative in the solution. You have to be in complete agreement. Likewise, you don’t have to convince anyone. In the medium term, the fact that one person has accepted only because they were convinced can be detrimental to the relationship and cause future problems.

If one is already married, my experience is that it can be resolved by seeking counseling and acting generously on both sides. It’s a manifestation of love to be generous in the solution. Both of you.

There are times when one partner, in a subtle way, prioritizes their career or comfort over the stability of the relationship. When this happens, generosity is conspicuously absent and will emerge, sooner or later, as a negative factor in the relationship.

José María Contreras

Source: https://www.exaudi.org/