Marital Diminishing Returns.

When you do what I do, dealing with marital breakups, you will come to realise that marriages have her own diminishing returns too. 

Generally, marital rewards or satisfaction are the highest at the altar. When the couple profess their lifetime commitment to each other and before a crowd of witnesses, the return is the greatest. 

And when I say “return”, I am not referring to the way that term is used in investment or economics, but it is in terms of relationship maturity. The return is therefore in the mutuality of sacrifices and growth. It is about the return of a seed of love planted by the stream of a resilient union, that over time blooms and provides shades for all.

But, the raw reality is that, as the days or months go by, the natural tendency is that the return gradually diminishes. That is, the planted seed seems to stop growing, the union shaky and the commitment faltering. There are many causes for this. 

It could be about novelty (or the erosion of it). You see, sleeping and waking up with the same person year in and year out can wear down that sense of newness, freshness, surprise and excitement. 

I call that the cold porridge syndrome. The hot food at the other table is always warmer, or seems tastier, than the one that is placed on your table since the time you say “I do”. At that moment, the delirious shouts of yam seng grow expectedly dim as the celebration of a love united calls it a night. 

This also brings me to the other related factor, that is, distractions. For marriage, I always see the imagery of a little boat struggling valiantly to paddle forward and keep afloat amid the storms, tides and winds of seduction. Temptations abound, and we, especially men, have to confront it one sobered-up day. 

And of course, if beauty of appearance is what arouses you when you book that BTO, that will surely fade in time. Trust me, marriage is not made for appearances or shows. It is not an exhibitionistic exercise. It is made for the couple to learn how to love. The learning fortifies the bond, strand by strand. And every marital convocation celebrates an overcoming achieved together against the storms of life, even the most unexpected ones. 

Mind you, age does not only add wisdom, most times bitterly acquired, it also causes physical atrophy. Your lifetime partner at the altar will change, and the fruit of marriage is never about how good it looks, but how satisfying it tastes. The nourishment is thus in the soul, in the spirit, not in the flesh. 

And that takes time for the roots to deepen in the soil. That nurturance takes conscious commitment as your partner ages. For no one ever plants a seed and expects a harvest the next morning. Even the rising of dawn beyond the horizon to bring light to the union is a gradual process, not an instant blinding floodlight. 

So I have cited novelty, distractions, seduction and how age catches up with the couple as factors to bear in mind. If you need to condense it all, then it is this: Time is the common thread to account for that diminishing return. With time, novelty wears off, distractions grow, seduction hides the bait and age follows suit. 

And let me say that if you can compress marriage into a day or two, even a week, every husband can proudly say I have remained faithful to my wife. Imagine that, where the profession of love is the loudest before a crowd of witnesses, the commitment seems almost unbreakable. If marriage is thus about that wedding night, or that honeymoon, and thereafter the two lives come to a mortal end, no marriages will fail because it is not benchmarked against time, the revealer of all. 

At this juncture, I do admit that this mental exercise seems silly, if not blatantly obvious. But it is not without a point, and the point is about time and diminishing return. The tide of time brings with it many challenges to test the union. Without it, love is like a child, never growing up, never being able to stand on its own two feet. 

Nothing in life escapes the principle of growth amid adversity, and this includes failures and stumbles along the journey, and then picking oneself up, learning from it, changing for the better, asking for forgiveness, and paddling forward together even stronger.

Time tests marriage; but it need not doom it. Yes, the journey of this union is a journey with time and all that time has to offer, both the challenges and the opportunity to overcome them. It is the opportunity for mutual growth, and not necessarily one of diminishing return. 

Sure, as one ages, he or she loses something. All the makeup and decor at the altar are not meant to last pass the night. Even the honeymoon has an expiry date. The flight always wait for the lovey-dovey couple to bring them home. In any event, they are not the defining features of a union made for a lifetime. Not by a long shot. What defines marriage is the time the two lives become one. It’s not just biblical. It’s practical. And that takes time. It takes a lifetime.

And the beauty of such union is that with time, it breaks the law of diminishing return to reap a bountiful harvest from a seed with deep roots and through the conscious efforts of the sowers who never gave up on each other, no matter how flawed.