YOU MARRIED A SAFETY NET, NOT A PERSON
Why the reasons you entered the relationship are the reasons you are lonely now
“When we marry for the wrong reasons...” It is a slow and painful revelation of an internal truth.
The Initial Glue
In the beginning, it holds together. Because the fear of loneliness... Family pressure... Economic need... External attraction... The desire to be saved... Or the hope that the other person will change... These are enough to enter a relationship. But they are not enough to sustain a lifetime.
The Gap Opens
Then a gap is created between the reason I entered the marriage and what the marriage actually demands: Emotional presence. Honesty. Daily choice. The ability to see and be seen.
The Symptoms
Inside, an unexplained emotional fatigue begins. Loneliness specifically within the relationship. Enormous sensitivity to the partner’s flaws. Small angers that feel huge. Thoughts of “How did I get here?” And a sensation that something deep and nameless is missing.
The Functional Trap
Between the couple, the connection becomes more Functional than Living. More Survivalist than Connecting. More Dependent than Chosen.
Patterns appear: Criticism. Distancing. Long silences. Parallel lives. Recurring dramas.
The Purpose of the Error
But the significant thing is this: Such marriages come to expose where I gave up on myself. Where I acted out of Fear and not out of Truth.
And where I am invited now: To grow. To wake up. To choose again. To build a connection from a more real place. Or to courageously understand that the lesson of this relationship was simply to wake me up to myself.
Translated from the Hebrew Transmissions of Ruth Kedem
ORIYA’S NOTE
We treat marriage like a bomb shelter. The sirens are wailing outside—social pressure, the biological clock, the fear of dying alone, the rent in Tel Aviv or New York being too high. So we grab the first person who looks decent and run into the bunker. We lock the door. We sigh with relief. “I made it. I am safe.”
But then the sirens stop. And you realize you locked yourself in a concrete room for 50 years with a stranger you don’t actually like.
You didn’t marry him. You married not being alone. You married your mother’s anxiety. You married a checkmark on a list.
Now you are mad at him because he isn’t making you happy. He can’t make you happy. He is just the guy you grabbed on the way to the shelter. You have two choices:
Open the door and leave the bunker.
Actually look at the person sitting next to you and decide to marry him—not for safety, but for who he is.