Counterintuitive Advice on Marriage, Divorce and Life: Eating Bitterness
Don’t Need to Be Happy All the Time
Most people think that for a relationship to work, you need to be happy all the time.
They’re wrong!
There is nothing wrong with being happy. Just don’t expect marriage (or divorce, or life) to always be that way.
Don’t Be Obsessed with Sweet Things. Cut Sugar Intake.
Americans are obsessed with sweet things. Since birth, babies have been spoon-fed force-fed SUGAR. Birthday parties, New Years, Valentines, Easter, Christmas, HALLOWEEN, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Fourth of July – everyone loves candy, candy, candy.
Obviously, sugar makes you fat, rots your teeth, and is just pure evil.
Here is an article on 10 Surprising Things Happen After You Stop Eating Sugar.
Notwithstanding all that health mumbo, jumbo – craving sweet things also always ruins marriage, divorce and life!
You should give your children BITTER stuff, not sweet stuff!
There is a Chinese proverb 吃苦.
Literal translation: Eat bitterness. My parents always said this whenever we had to do what we didn’t want to do. It’s kind of like, “No pain, no gain”. Basically, I was always taught to eat bitter stuff.
Which is why moving to America at age 6 kinda screwed me up, because Americans are all about the SWEET stuff.
Seriously, what is the most bitter thing you can buy at an American supermarket? Chocolate?
Certainly, there isn’t any bitter melon. (The most disgusting vegetable in the world, and also the biggest symbol of parental love. If your Chinese parent forced you to eat this while screaming you are a worthless loser who will never accomplish anything in life, you are most definitely….LOVED).
Marriage Should Be Longsuffering, not Saccharin Sweet
Longsuffering doesn’t mean “long suffering”. It means showing patience despite the troubles caused by others. A lot of you enter marriage thinking it should be something saccharine sweet. It’s evident by the silly pet names you give each other: Sweetheart, Sweetness, Honey, Baby, Candy, Babycakes, Muffin, Gummy Bears, Fruit Loop, Pumpkin, SUGAR. (how come no one ever calls each other SALT? or BITTER MELON?)
The movies always show 2 perfectly attractive, skinny people with real boobs, hair, eyelashes and skin (if you live in LA, it is a rare sighting to find an over-30 human with EVERYTHING real), falling in love and having perfect families. These people never have to work, fold laundry, take lice out of kids’ hair, or cook!
You never see the tired couple, struggling to make ends meet. The working mom, throwing off her high heels, with an eternal RBF, race into the filthy kitchen to make dinner for screaming kids and an absent husband who is again missing dinner tonight because he is outwith his cinq-a-sept (this is a French word “mistress”, based on the time spent on a mistress, 5-7pm). You certainly won’t see a sex-less couple in the movies. Menopause? nah.
“With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;” Ephesians 4:2
It’s all wrong! For a Marriage to work, you need to eat bitter.
And in order for a Divorce to pass, you need to eat bitter. For life to work, you need to eat bitter. Social media is a good example – it’s all filled with sweet bullshit. Everyone’s got perfect lives, on perfect vacations, with perfect children and teeth.
Let me remind you about eating bitter.
Divorce won’t solve your problems.
People come to me, thinking “divorce” will cure all of their problems. WHY in the world would anyone think this? Divorce increases your problems, at least 4-fold. It may be the solution, but it won’t be easy. If you had a tough marriage, you must expect your divorce will be 10 times harder. If co-parenting in a marriage was tough; in divorce it’s impossible.
DO NOT fight over your kids.
That’s a lie society told you. People enter divorce thinking, “I am going to prove how selfless I am, and just fight over what’s important – the KIDS”. This is wrong. Custody battles are the prime example of selfishness. LEARN by reading. The goal isn’t to have a War of the Roses divorce. The goal is to have a health transition for the children.
Do NOT waste money on divorce lawyers.
Sometimes lawyers are necessary. Like, if you need to know what the law is on custody and on property division, CONSULT a lawyer. However, this lawyer should NOT be making life decisions for you.
先苦,後甜 (Eating Bitterness)
Counterintuitive Advice on Marriage, Divorce and Life: Eating Bitterness
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