A perfect marriage still after five years

January 27, 2023 0 Comments

I am not a psychologist, nor have I had any training in couples counselling. However, I have been married to a wonderful girl for the last five years, and during that time, we never fought or yelled at each other. Every day is a day of peace and love and I find her as exciting now as the day I fell in love with her. Over the years I have come to understand her mind and I believe I have discovered the key to a happy relationship. It certainly works for me and maybe it works for you. Let me explain that I am from the UK and I met my wife in Indonesia where we still live.

So let’s start with the appreciation. Have you ever noticed that when you throw a ball at a puppy and he runs happily, picks it up and comes back to you and then you pat him on the head, stir him up and tell him how smart he is? His tail will wag wildly (in our Rottweiller’s case, his STUB will wag wildly). He just loves the appreciation. I have a habit of forgetting where I put my reading glasses. One day when he was looking for them, one of my wife Yuyun’s young relatives found them and returned them to me. I thanked him and said, “Wow, what a smart guy you are.” His chest swelled and his face smiled. After that, every chance I got, I would “find” my glasses, even if I knew where they were, just so I could hear a few words of praise. You know, we don’t really grow. We just get old. I love that very apt saying “The only difference between a man and a boy is the cost of their toys.” So how does this apply to our relationship? Well, several times a day I tell Yuyun how beautiful she is, how much I love her, and how lucky I am to have her love. This has the effect of not only showing her that I appreciate her, but also making her WANT to be beautiful with the result that she always tries to look her best. I make a point of never taking her for granted. Every time she cooks me a meal, I kiss her, thank her, and tell her how nice she was. Every time she goes shopping, she goes out of her way to find something special that I like because she knows that I will appreciate her efforts. Every time she comes to kiss me, I thank her. The words “thank you” if spoken with sincerity can do wonders.

What about communication and understanding? I always remember some of my relatives in the UK arguing and the husband yelling “What the hell is wrong with you?” to which his wife replied “You know very well what happens!” But she didn’t… because he didn’t understand her. Yuyun and I have spent hours talking about our childhood and past lives. After five years I have a pretty good understanding of how your mind works. She came from a very poor family that sometimes did not have enough money to buy food. Her father had to go fishing or massage some of the neighbors to get a little livelihood. As a child she did not have toys or dolls. As she got older, she would look at other girls who were doing better and wish she could have a cell phone or nice clothes like them. The result of this is that today she has an internal drive to be recognized and admired. Through the web page that we manage, we have appeared a couple of times on local television and when we walk through her town many people point to her and hers stops to chat: she loves this. Now, at the age of 24, she has three cell phones and a closet full of dolls, making up for her disadvantaged past! So I understand what drives her and I attend to it. Since I understand that she never had money and had to keep asking for something, I let her handle all her family finances. SHE has the bank account and debit card that give her a sense of power. We are not rich by any means, living solely on my retirement pension. This he understands and is never extravagant. We will go shopping for clothes for her, spend $20 and she will go home happy. Based on her childhood experience, she will go twenty miles out of the way to save ten cents on an item. This drives me totally crazy, but it makes her happy, so I play along. My attitude is that she does everything in her power to keep me happy, so she feels I have to reciprocate. It is the same to visit her family. Since I don’t speak Indonesian, I sit there like a doll, sweating and being eaten alive by mosquitoes while she chats. I stay calm by remembering that SHE is having fun and she is never demanding and of course I love her. I usually end up playing with the little kids in the family who are cute and where I don’t need the language.

I guess you could call this consideration. Both Yuyun and I are considerate. If we see someone pushing a motorcycle we will stop and see if we can help them. If we see a child cross the street, we will make sure they cross safely. This is our nature. I’m not sure someone who isn’t considerate can change, but maybe you can force yourself to consider your partner’s feelings. Yuyun, for example, likes constant attention. She regularly wants to be hugged and loved. I like to keep my brain active, so I spend considerable time writing computer programs and solving the most difficult Sukodu puzzles. This requires a lot of concentration, trying to remember a series of numbers in my head and I hate being interrupted. However, when Yuyun wants attention or she wants to talk, she immediately puts the matter aside and gives her my full attention. I always remember the story of a fish tank in which there was a glass partition. On one side was a large ferocious fish and on the other side a small and placid one. The big fish tried to attack and eat the little fish, but all it got was a sore nose. After a few days, she got tired of it all and gave up. Then she removed the partition, but the big fish still had no interest in chasing the little fish. The analogy of that story is that if you reject someone’s love enough times, then they’ll stop trying and maybe go with someone else. I really think Yuyun thinks like me, since I’m so happy with our relationship that I have absolutely no interest in any other woman. I can honestly say that this is the first time in my life that I have felt like this. In fact, Yuyun, even though she never gets mad at me, she gets furious when any other man tries to flirt with her, as they do on a regular basis! “I have a husband who loves me,” she tells them herself. “What do I need you for?”

I should mention that someone’s culture will obviously have something to do with the way they think and act. Here in Indonesia it is customary to remove your shoes when entering your home. Therefore, many people wear sandals that are easier to put on and take off. When we leave someone’s house, Yuyun precedes me and reaches down to turn MY sandals inside out so I don’t have to. When I told her that she didn’t really need me to do that, she replied, “Please don’t stop me from doing something to show I love you.” After five years she still does this! When we go shopping SHE insists on carrying all the packages. When she has a very heavy one, I have to force her to let me take it. She doesn’t expect or want you to help her in the kitchen with cooking or cleaning. I’m your Mr. Fixit when an appliance or vehicle is having trouble. In fact, I CAN fix most mechanical and electrical problems, since I was trained in that, but when I do, Yuyun thinks I’m a real genius and tells all of her friends how smart I am. She is not interested in equality. She wants to be a woman and she wants me to be a man. She starts wrestling matches with me to prove to herself that I am stronger than her. She wants me to protect her from anything that scares her. She’ll tell me what she wants to do and she’ll ask me if that’s okay with me. She knows she’ll say yes, but she likes to ask me anyway.

Sex also requires consideration. How can you know what pleases your partner if you don’t ask? When I was young, I used to ask every girl I met what she liked and when and how she liked her. I built a knowledge base far superior to my friends and they could never understand how I managed to date such beautiful women when I personally wasn’t particularly good looking. When you love someone, there is a lot of pleasure in giving pleasure to your loved one. Yuyun and I sleep together in what’s called the spoon position, cuddling all night. After five years I find her as sexy as when I met her. Part of this may be because she is kept in such good condition. She never goes to sleep without removing her makeup and taking a shower. Her body and her breath are always sweet-smelling. We really do live more as a pair of lovers than as husband and wife.

Yuyun wakes up around 5 am with a beaming smile that stays with her all day. She jumps out of bed, jumping and dancing as I try to get out. I don’t know how she does that. She tells me it’s because she’s always happy, day and night. I can wake her up in the middle of the night, take her for a motorcycle ride in cold pouring rain and she’ll STILL go on giggling and giggling…even the couple of times we slip off the bike in the mud. How can you NOT love a woman like that? That’s why I never get mad at her. I DO get angry at situations, but I never take it out on her personally. When I start to rant and rave about something, she just smiles and says “Remember I love you” and that breaks me and I start laughing with her.

So the above is MY secret to a long lasting relationship. Maybe you can find something there that will improve yours.

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