By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar | Posted: September 19, 2019

The question was asked: What are the pitfalls that bring down a marriage both from a worldly and a spiritual perspective?

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar answered this question, as recorded in the following short video. 

He offers wisdom about how to avoid the common pitfalls in your marriage, and a unique perspective on respect, love, faith in your partner, accepting different expressions, and letting go of illusions. 

Marriage is an institution where you commit yourself 100% to your partner. You have faith that your partner cares for you as much as you care for your partner.

Confidence in your partner 

Two things are very essential. One is having the confidence that your partner cares for you. Do not question their intention to care for you by their behavior toward you. If you do, you’re putting yourself down.

Don’t put your partner in a position to prove their love and commitment. This is very embarrassing for the spouse. If they have to repeatedly prove their commitment or their love for you it’s a burden for them. It’s stifling. That’s when they start to move away from you. “Enough is enough. I don’t want to prove,” they will say.

The doubts you get in your mind are of your own making. Your prana goes down and you get doubts. Because of small petty things you start doubting the good intentions of your spouse.

Different expressions

You must understand that men and women express their emotions differently. But when women want men to express emotions their way, men will always be grumbling. When the man thinks the woman should not express in the way she’s expressing, he will not have peace of mind. So you must understand you have certain limitations on expressions. 

Don’t demand expression of love. Take it for granted that it’s there. And go with the commitment that you’ve made, and that’s it.

Love is not a rosy movie

Don’t picture a rosy, movie type of scenario. Rosy scenarios that you make in your mind make you think, “Oh forever we will be in love,” and express it the way we were doing before and in the beginning of our marriage. But after marriage these expressions die down, and feelings change; feelings cannot remain the same, unless and until you’re enlightened. 

Feelings have their own highs and lows. And so you need to understand, adjust, and accept that feelings change. Don’t base your relationship on feelings, but only on commitment, on values, and on a bigger vision or cause in life.

Stop policing

One more thing is, stop policing each other. When you’re in love with someone, you want to know everything about them. And this is where, when people are deeply in love with their spouse, they start policing. 

You say, “Where did you go, what did you do? Who did you talk to? Why did you laugh? What did you talk about?” When you start policing like this, they start to feel stifled. And when people feel stifled, they definitely want to move away from you.

Respect and love

In any relationship, two things come up. One is respect and the other is love. You need both. If you think your partner has no respect for you, your love will also diminish. Respect needs distance or an elevation. If you respect somebody they should be above you. Or if you have respect for someone, there’s some distance.

But with love, it can never tolerate the parity of heights. In love you want to be one. Love cannot stand the distance. Love wants to know everything. Respect needs a little space. Love cannot tolerate space. So this is the conflict between love and respect.

When people are in love, they start losing respect. When they lose respect, they lose love and then the whole thing falls apart. This is my observation.

Let go of illusions

The mind is attached to such small things, and you just make a big drama out of them. That’s why it’s called maya (illusion). You create a mountain out of a molehill. Nothing happened, and then you make up a drama and say, “Oh you don’t love me and da, da, da.”

You live in your own world and the other person doesn’t even know or understand what’s happening to you.

So when you stop policing, and give space to each other, view them with respect, you will see your love for the person increases and their respect and love for you also goes up.