What do you do when you let your heart run free, knowing even as it happens that you have made the worst possible decision? We often hear about celebrities that get married on a whim, and within a matter of days, or sometimes weeks, they head for the divorce court. They have the courage to stand up in public and say "This is not for me."



But many people do not end a spur-of-the moment marriage so quickly. They decide to make the best of it, to work on the relationship, to sleep in the bed that they have made for themselves, and so on and so on.

Which is the best way to go? Get out of the marriage quickly, or work on it? There is no right or wrong answer. The issue does get confused when a marriage certificate is brought in, because then there are legal as well as emotional ties that need to be cut.

Some people get married on the basis of passion - and passion invariably burns out when the reality of daily life makes demands. When the lid of the toothpaste tube is missing, or when an unexpectedly large bill is to be paid, or the toilet seat is up, or the pockets of the clothes in the laundry bag have not been emptied, a minor incident could become a stone in a shoe and eventually a reason for divorce.

But then these issues are superficial and only become serious when they are symptoms of other, more deep-rooted issues. Often a failed marriage is based on unrealistic expectations. The ideal is to enter the marriage with no expectations at all, but we often live in a culture where especially marriage comes with many unrealistic expectations.

A comedian once said that a bride's attitude towards her betrothed can be summed up in three words: Isle. Altar. Hymn. The implication is that women enter into a marriage with the expectation that she will get her way, but at times men also do this.

Either way, we miss the point here. A marriage or a wedding is not about the ceremony or about the legalities. It is always about the lessons that people have to learn from each other. There is no such thing as a mistake or a wrong decision. Some decisions have consequences that are harder to deal with, but those decisions are the ones that we learn most from about ourselves.

Some of us have entered into a marriage or other relationship, even an employment relationship, knowing in the pit of our stomachs that we make the biggest possible mistake, and at the same time knowing that there is no turning back. We then spent much energy first "working on the relationship", and then justifying why we are in it.

When the right answers do not come, we get angry at the world, and if we are willing to take responsibility for our actions, we get angry at ourselves for being so stupid.

The next step of this completely natural process is to get depressed - depression is anger without passion. Only then do we get the courage to make the required change and get out of the relationship.

The aftermath of such an experience is often that we spend a long time in turmoil and going through all these emotions again and again. Some people never get the point, while others get the point and move on.

What is the point? It is that we go through these experiences because they are meant to teach us about ourselves. We have work or love relationships with these people because they had agreed to become our teachers. Often these decisions are meant for us to experience our dark sides - where we have to confront our own demons - and the partners in these relationships help us to do this.

When we do not understand how these experiences shape us, we get stuck in the turmoil of "how could they do that to me" or "how could I have been so stupid2.

However, when the moment of understanding happens, we feel such immense relief. That is the moment when we see the actions of the other person in perspective, not as vindictive, but rather as a means of helping us to get our own demons out in the open.

That is the moment when we grow up and experience gratitude. We can then go back to the people who have "done these things to us" and thank them for their contribution to our inner peace.

Imagine a society where we understand that all experiences are learning experiences. We are far from it yet. What we do have, is a society that seeks to blame and to place the burden of our own lack of self-insight on other people.

Of course we can allow these various emotions to get out of hand, and take some rash action. For example, there was the woman who approached the local pharmacist and asked for cyanide. "What on earth would you want to do with cyanide?" he asked.

"I want to poison my husband" she said coolly.

Of course the pharmacist was quite upset about this and made it quite clear to her that he was not going to be part of such a plot, and that he had no intention of selling any poison to her for that purpose.

The woman then took a photograph out of her bag. It showed the pharmacist's wife in bed with the woman's husband.

"Now that changes the situation," the pharmacist said. "You did not tell me that you had a prescription."