Does friendship make marriage more interesting?

The first time Elvis proposed marriage to Sandra, she rejected his advances because from her level of reasoning and experience, a man should propose marriage to a lady after they both had been in a relationship for several years, and so as friends who know each other so well and could complete each other’s sentences […]

The first time Elvis proposed marriage to Sandra, she rejected his advances because from her level of reasoning and experience, a man should propose marriage to a lady after they both had been in a relationship for several years, and so as friends who know each other so well and could complete each other’s sentences if they wanted to.
I think I like the idea of a man proposing to marry his friend because it only proves he has been watching her do her thing,  and not engaging in any  fake lifestyle but her true self and he is attracted to that.
Many ladies these days often adopt fake lifestyles to please people or place themselves in desired positions of class, says Mrs. C.L Nwosu, an accountant.
When men and women develop a friendship, a bond is established and both of them are able to see each other plainly without the veil many people wear while dating a member of the opposite sex.
These are the days of short and brief marriages and a lot of factors have surfaced as the root cause of divorces and separations, one of them being that people hate the institution once they are in it.
However, a study carried out by the Canadian National Bureau of Economic Research shows that in order to achieve happiness in marriage, close friendship is a major factor and best/close friends always have the best of both worlds in marriages.
According to the research findings, those who consider their spouse as their “best friend” boasted the highest levels of happiness, in fact, the well-being benefits were twice as large for those couples who married strangers.
C.S Lewis once said, “It is when we do things together that friendship springs up — painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, and fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction.”
Friendship in marriage can also lose its potency if it is not regularly nourished by both parties, so even when couples get married as friends, they must always work especially hard to keep that friendship going as it is the foundation upon which their marriage is built.
While some people have succeeded in creating a divide between in-love marriage and friendship marriage, study shows that the distinction is hardly needed as there are various existent factors which make marriages last.
The divides are grouped thus; being in-love with the other person when you can hardly breathe around them and always have stars in your eyes when you think of them, while the friendship love is the realistic kind where you like your significant other but are not in love with them.
“While love is still a potent factor in your decision to share your life with another person, friendship cannot be dismissed as a solid component of a healthy, happy relationship. Not all couples, married or not, are in crazy, “I-can’t-live-without-you” love. Affection combined with friendship makes for a great partnership,” writes Kristen Houghton for the Huffington Post.
In her writing, Houghton suggests that a solid friendship and love make couples better than the whirlwind romance stuff we read in books and see in movies. “Creating a comfortable life with someone you respect and admire, and with whom you are comfortable as a friend, is an aspect of love that we don’t think about as often as we should,” she concludes.
Whichever kind of marriage a couple has, it does not change the fact that contempt and kindness play a huge role in how the marriage will turn out in the long run – if the couple will be torn apart by feelings of contempt towards each other due to selfish behaviour or if they will gravitate towards one another even more due to kind actions towards each other.
Kindness executed poorly still counts even when it is not done to the best of one’s ability. For instance, a wife comes home tired from work and still manages to make dinner and give her husband a massage without all the works – scented candles, rhythm and blues music and scented oils, the intent is what matters. In the wise words of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.
If your partner expresses a need and you are tired, stressed, or distracted, then the generous spirit comes in when a partner makes a bid, and you still turn toward your partner. In that moment, the easy response may be to turn away from your partner and focus on your iPad or your book or the television, to mumble “Uh huh” and move on with your life, but neglecting small moments of emotional connection will slowly wear away at your relationship. Neglect creates distance between partners and breeds resentment in the one who is being ignored, explains clinical psychologist, Julie Gottman.
Great friends hardly ignore each other even when they have been together for several years, couples whose friendship brought them together in the first place hardly want to throw in the towel and give up on their significant other when the road becomes rough. Ralph and Teresa, who have been married for over 17 years, say it best; “You really have to like each other to last. When the sex becomes less important you get better at enjoying doing things together, while still doing things apart.”
Eremionk2hale contributes from Abuja