Same religion, same church, same circle, and even same school with most interests' common -will these guarantee a happy marriage? What do you think? Before proceeding further it would be proper to talk about happy marriage. What is a happy marriage? I would broadly define happy marriage as one in which the partners like to be with each other, enjoy depending on each other, love each other, and are happy to be with each other. In a happy marriage when a partner meets the other in the evening, he/she will feel genuine joy. They will miss each other when separated for any reason. They like each other, and their love is not only romantic but also friendly. They respect each other as persons and when asked if they could live on an island all alone only with the partner, they would answer yes without hesitation. They don't need other distractions such as friends, kids or television to live with each other in the pretension of happiness.
If you look around, you may be surprised that many marriages are not happy. The marriages still sustain because of the fear of pain of separation. It is not the pleasure of happiness together that binds them but the pain of separation. What would happen to kids? How will I live alone? What about division of assets? The fear of the pain of separation is so massive that unhappy existence together is considered better. Is this good life? No, it is mere existence.
Coming back to the title of this article, what role does the personality of partners play in making a happy marriage? The first requirement that has nothing to do with personality is love. Not the love of the passionate kind that may dies soon but genuine care and affection for each other. The personality traits that contribute may be for example - cleanliness. If the husband believes in extreme cleanliness and the wife does not bother a bit about that, do you think they will be happy with each other? Half of the time they will have arguments about cleanliness. This was only an example. Let us take another example. The wife is of giving type and the husband is a real stingy person. What then? Habits, nature, values, life goals, beliefs, and all such traits that make us a human being are the important role players in making a happy marriage. Emotional makeup plays an equally important role. For example if one partner is quick tempered he/she will make life difficult for the other. Think about all personality traits, emotional make up and find out if there is commonality in all these. Small differences are always ignored because of the love between the couple, but if the difference in personalities is big, love will also get sacrificed. Love that bound them in the beginning will become the first victim of the differences.
