How do you make a marriage work?

Sep 14, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

(Kaieteur News) – During my next encounter with the Guru, I asked him a question that perhaps millions of people have themselves and others. “Guru,” I said, “how do you make a marriage work?”

He looked at me and smiled.

“First,” he said, “stop trying to make your spouse work.”

I laughed.

He did not. “You cannot build a successful marriage by trying to manufacture the perfect husband or the perfect wife. Marriage begins when two imperfect people accept that they have each married an imperfect person.”

The Guru explained that in the Hindu tradition, marriage is not simply a romantic arrangement between two people. It is a partnership involving dharma—shared duties, responsibilities and obligations. In other words, marriage is not merely about asking, “What can this person do for me?” It is also about asking, “What am I prepared to do for this person?”

We enter marriage thinking about what we hope to receive. Companionship. Affection. Security. Sex. Children. Financial support. Someone to share our dreams.

And there is nothing wrong with wanting these things. But sooner or later, marriage asks the more difficult question: What are you prepared to give when giving becomes inconvenient?

It is easy to love someone when everything is going well. The real examination begins when the money is tight, the children are difficult, one partner is sick, careers become demanding, parents need care, tempers rise and the romantic excitement of the early years begins to settle into the ordinary routines of life. That is when marriage stops being a fairy tale and becomes a discipline.

The Guru told me that one of the greatest mistakes couples make is believing that love should always feel the way it did when they first met. “Love changes,” he said. “At first, it may be excitement. Then companionship. Then responsibility. Then friendship. Then perhaps something deeper.”

He paused. “The mistake is thinking that because the butterflies have disappeared, love has disappeared.”

Perhaps marriage is partly the art of recognising love in its less glamorous forms. It is making the cup of tea. It is remembering the appointment. It is sitting beside someone in hospital. It is collecting the child when you are tired. It is paying the bills. It is saying, “I was wrong.”

He explained that Hindu philosophy places great emphasis on mastering the senses and the impulses of the mind. Not every irritation needs a response. Not every disagreement needs a winner. Not every insult needs to be returned.

“Two people cannot live together for decades without irritating each other,” he said. “The goal is not to eliminate irritation. The goal is to prevent irritation from becoming resentment.”

A successful marriage requires falling in love repeatedly—not necessarily with the same version of the person, but with the person they are becoming.

As I prepared to leave, I asked the Guru one final question.

“Guru, after all these years, what keeps two people together?”

He said, “Marriage is not about finding someone who makes you happy every day. It is about becoming someone with whom another person can build a good life.”

I walked away thinking that perhaps we have misunderstood marriage. We spend so much time looking for the right person that we sometimes forget to become the right person.

We ask whether our spouse loves us enough. Perhaps we should also ask whether we are loving enough.

We ask whether our partner understands us. Perhaps we should ask whether we have taken the trouble to understand them.

We complain that marriage has lost its romance. Perhaps we should ask what we have done lately to keep the romance alive.

Because a marriage is a garden. It has to be watered. It has to be tended. Sometimes it has to be pruned.

And sometimes, after a terrible season, two people have to decide that they are willing to plant again. Perhaps that is the secret. A good marriage is not two people who never hurt each other. It is two people who care enough to repair what has been hurt.

Two people who learn to say “I am sorry.” Two people who learn to forgive. Two people who understand that there will be seasons of laughter and seasons of hardship.

And through all of them, they keep walking together.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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