In many cases, the helplessness that leads men and women to part ways after marriage is often attributed to the overly familiar distance between the two. Constantly being together transforms from having everything to say to having nothing left to talk about, and initial passion turns into resignation. This leads to both parties being unable to bear the loneliness of familiarity, resulting in cracks appearing in the marriage. At the moment these cracks appear, family ties may still offer some advice. However, once affairs occur on both sides, even the most powerful attempts to save the marriage become redundant.
Therefore, it's not wrong to say that affairs are the killers of marriage, but fundamentally, they cannot withstand the erosion of time. Saying that time is the killer of marriage might garner more agreement from people, but we overlook the ultimate killer in marriage: both parties being unable to forget the past.
After marriage, an overly familiar relationship can appropriately create some distance to increase intimacy. There are countless books on the market about the art of maintaining a marriage, so methods are not the issue. Moreover, the difference between love and marriage is the transformation from early passion to later familial bonds. Once a strong sense of family provides both parties with stable happiness and security, and if the couple consistently maintains a spring-like attitude towards each other, neither time nor affairs are the biggest killers. Take灰TaiLang (a character from a Chinese cartoon) for example, his loyalty to his wife红TaiLang shows as he catches sheep instead of chickens, goes east instead of west when told, and his happiest moments are when he catches lambs and lets his wife give orders, while she praises him saying "Husband, you're amazing." Their seemingly flawless marital life without cracks proves that no matter how familiar they are,灰TaiLang remains devoted to his wife. However, what灰TaiLang cannot tolerate is红TaiLang constantly bringing up her former lover小白Lang as a reason to mock him, making him feel that all his efforts for his wife are in vain. Every time this happens,灰TaiLang, who usually has a good image, grits his teeth and angrily leaves home.
Men and women alike can tolerate the other party having their own past, but they cannot spend their lives with a partner who is immersed in memories of someone else. Often, something more terrifying than infidelity comes from mental torture.
Zou Zou's advice: Remember, the killer of marriage is not an affair, nor is it time, but rather the inability to forget the past.
Case:
After the last office scandal, Wang Ying learned from her close friend Liu Pei to use the method of "driving away the husband" to make her husband Zhao Xiaqiang "change his mind." Every day, apart from going to work on time, she also changed her previous lifestyle where everything was done for her. She specifically learned online how to make a tempting winter melon rib soup. When Wang Ying came home and opened the door, she even mistakenly checked the house number, thinking she had come to the wrong place.
Seeing Wang Ying's surprised look at the winter melon rib soup on the table, Zhao Xiaqiang specially took her handbag and enjoyed her dazed expression, saying he had just started learning and aimed to make every evening's dinner have four different dishes and each soup unique. Perhaps Wang Ying has always been playing the role of serving others, and this first change made her feel that happiness came too suddenly, leaving her speechless. She hugged Zhao Xiaqiang tightly. Sometimes, a woman's happiness is very simple; extravagant displays of wealth might win a beauty's smile, but daily small touches will definitely bring the two closer. Wang Ying's praise for Zhao Xiaqiang was often on her lips, knowing that only in this way could she give him motivation to keep cooking.
But sometimes Wang Ying wondered if Zhao Xiaqiang was doing this because he couldn't let go of the last office scandal, trying to make up for it by cooking for her out of guilt? After all, men always know the difference between family and extramarital affairs. Even if they indulge in revelry outside and claim their love for another, they won't easily get divorced, which is perhaps one of the characteristics of married men.
So, Wang Ying took the opportunity before bedtime to dim the bedside lamp, gazing affectionately at Zhao Xiaqiang and said that she wasn't a petty woman, and that some things were best left in the past. As long as they were happy now, that was enough. Before Zhao Xiaqiang could explain, Wang Ying silenced him with a kiss, and they fell back onto the bed.
Not long after, Zhao Xiaqiang and Wu Liang's company began promoting an SNS community popular among young people. To test the system's stability and check for issues, the company required each employee to recruit familiar people to register for testing. Those who didn't meet the quota would be fined. They first asked their respective wives to register, then mobilized their university classmates for help, and then through them, recruited more people. Zhao Xiaqiang even told Wang Ying that it was for work, unintentionally reconnecting with classmates he hadn't spoken to in years, achieving two goals at once. But this reconnection almost caused trouble.
It turned out that through mutual connections between classmates and colleagues, Zhao Xiaqiang inadvertently added the 90s intern female college student again. Curiously entering her space, he discovered several personal diaries recounting their past together. Panicking, he quickly closed the webpage, fearing Wang Ying would suddenly appear behind him and catch him red-handed. Only after confirming there was no one did he sigh in relief.
However, not long after, Wang Ying logged into the SNS community and unexpectedly saw the name of that female college student among Zhao Xiaqiang's friends. When she clicked in, she found that Zhao Xiaqiang's "footprints" were still in this girl's space, and there were several articles recording how sweet their past together had been. This infuriated Wang Ying. All her recent diligent cooking and soup-making seemed like a cover-up for continued interaction, making such a man utterly despicable. It seems "Rather believe there are ghosts in the world than trust the lies from a man's mouth" was entirely correct.
Faced with Wang Ying's questioning, no matter how Zhao Xiaqiang tried to explain, at this moment, Wang Ying saw all his explanations as excuses and evasions. For example, why did he add that female college student as a friend? Zhao Xiaqiang explained that it was added by other colleagues, and he saw it in their spaces, not knowing who added whom. Then, why didn't he tell her? Zhao Xiaqiang explained that he was afraid Wang Ying would overthink it, but Wang Ying countered that this made her even less trusting. Finally, regarding why he didn't delete the records of their past, Zhao Xiaqiang was already too tired to answer. Saying he had no authority or that it was someone else's privacy wouldn't stop Wang Ying from finding reasons to attack him.
So for a period, the two went cold war. Each thought they were right and refused to apologize to the other, not realizing that the fundamental problem was their inability to forget the past.
Will they reconcile? Let's wait and see.
(To be continued)
Work by Zou Zou, exclusively published on Sina Blog. Reprint with acknowledgment.