Happiness and Marriage

As we were discussing the article Is Marriage Bad for Us, I recalled a video that I had recently seen on social media. As I was scrolling through Facebook the other day, I came across a video that was shared titled I'm Not Responsible for Making Jada Happy. The video was of Will Smith who relayed this message about his marriage with his wife: "We came into this false romantic concept that somehow when we got married we would become one and what we realized is that we were two completely separate people on two completely separate individual journeys and that we were choosing to walk our separate journeys together but her happiness was her responsibility and my happiness was my responsibility." 

The idea of "becoming one" with whomever you choose as your life partner has never been appealing to me. I never understood why anyone would want to lose their sense of individuality. To me, "becoming one" sounds like you are depending on another person and you have lost your sense of self. I do not believe there is anything wrong with getting married or vice versa. However, I think Will Smith described exactly my thoughts on how I would want my marriage to be.

He continues to say: "We decided we were going to find our individual internal private separate joy and then we were going to present ourselves to the relationship and to each other already happy not coming to each other begging with our empty cups out." This idea of relying on your spouse or even just your partner for happiness is also a falsehood we were taught since we were children. You think that once you enter into a relationship or a marriage with someone, it will make you happy because our culture is so focused on love and finding that someone who you can share your life with. We believe that once we do find that special someone, they will become our source of happiness which isn't realistic nor is it fair.