Is Your Marriage Predestined? – The Spiritual Relationships Between Husband and Wife

“A hundred million raindrops fall, not one of them falls in the wrong place. Billions of people have met each other, none of them is by coincidence.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

There are over 7 billion people in the world, and you do not encounter someone by chance, but given the right conditions, the right time, and the right level of character development, you are meant to meet someone who will test you, teach you a lesson, or bring you a gift.

No one on this planet would choose to marry someone just to be later disappointed by divorce. Yet there are many things that we do not choose in this life, such as our gender, parents, location of birth, race, skin color, time we were born, appearance, etc.

So, is your marriage predestined before birth? Do you actually have the choice to choose your life partner?

Let’s first start with a real-life story…

A Story of an Alcoholic Husband and a Devoted Wife

There was a marriage between an alcoholic husband and a devoted wife. At the first stage of their marriage, everything was beautiful, rosy, and romantic. Yet, after the birth of the first child, the husband started to mistreat his wife.

He beat, abused, humiliated, and did all kinds of terrible things to disgrace her, particularly while he was intoxicated. The wife was still responsible and devoted to her husband despite all things he did to her.

There were legal battles involved: they had to go to court numerous times; the police had to interfere with their family affairs; the divorce procedure was delayed and complicated, etc.

The marriage ended in divorce, and the wife had to raise the child by herself because the husband was judged to be incapable of raising the kid due to his alcoholic problems. The wife had a low income and no friends, knowing no English and living in Canada.

So, is this marriage predestined?

At first, you might think that it would be unfair for the wife. She was very graceful and devoted to her husband. How come it would be fair if her husband treated her like that?

But the law of the universe indicates everything happens for a reason. If you want to judge this situation rightly, you have to look at this couple in their previous incarnations.

In a past life, this same couple might have married each other. However, after having the first child, the wife decided to divorce her husband to marry another wealthy man in the town. She was driven by lust, greed, and a lack of self-control.

The husband was left devastated and depressed. He had no way to escape his pain except by indulging in alcohol.

Therefore, in this lifetime, the wife has to pay off her karmic debts owed to her husband, and the marriage/divorce was prearranged before birth as a means to pay off the debts.

Let’s say you owe someone $1 million and run away debt-free, isn’t that beautiful?

The law of the universe indicates “no loss, no gain”. To gain, you must lose.

If you cause someone to suffer, or take something that belongs to someone else and that is not rightly earned, you will have to pay it back. If you don’t want to pay, you will be forced to pay by the universe.

The Karmic Relationships Between Husband and Wife

If your marriage is predestined, who predestines it?

The answer is you. Only you have the power to change your fate, because the only way to change your fate is to change yourself.

If you take a closer look at your life now, where you are now is made up of all your previous choices, isn’t it right? If you made different choices in the past, would you have a different life now?

Therefore, all your previous choices in your past relationship/marriage will have karmic effects on your future relationship/marriage. Cause produces effect, and effect produces cause. Trees bear fruits, and fruits bear trees. All the good and bad things occurring in marriage are because of you – the Cause and the Effect, the Creator and the Creation.

For example, if you had sex before marriage, cheated on your partner, wore overly revealing clothes, or committed masturbation and pornography, these acts can create karmic debts manifested as marital hardships. You can’t do bad things and want to have a good marriage. You can’t have a good marriage while doing bad things.

Usually, the fate of your marriage is decided based on two kinds of karma:

• Karmic Love
• Karmic Debts

Let’s take a closer look at these two.

Karmic Love

In Buddhism, the Karma of Love indicates the concept of “repaying gratitude” as a cause for marriage between two people. This happens when two people marry because one person has helped or saved the other in a past life.

The receiver of this grace was so touched and grateful that they wished to repay the favor, even if they’re required to be reborn as a pet for the other person in a future life. Their marriage would be prearranged by the karma of love/gratitude from their past encounter.

This is considered one of the most satisfactory karma for marriage because one partner deeply appreciates and respects the other. However, this kind of marriage only has a higher possibility of resulting in happiness, because it doesn’t guarantee that their personality will match or their connection is free from conflicts.

Alternatively, marriage could happen because you and your spouse have had a really good relationship with each other across many lifetimes, and you vowed to marry one another again and again.

This forms a special bond between you and your spouse, and this is why people in the past call it the “vow of marriage” because your marriage is a sacred vow. It’s not about satisfying your sexual desires but a “till death do we part” relationship. It’s not about you, but about your partner, your shared future, and your children.

Karmic Debts

Karmic debts between the husband and wife can happen due to mistreatments and ill intentions in previous lifetimes.

This is exactly the case of the alcoholic husband and the devoted wife we’ve talked about. The wife did something wrong to her husband in a past life, so these debts have to be settled one way or another, even if it looks unfair to the wife on the surface.

In our society today, there are typically two types of karmic debts that can lead to marriage:

• Debts of love – In a past life, a man might have managed to love a woman just to satisfy his sexual desires, then abandoned her after getting what he wanted. The woman would have felt emotionally cheated. If the woman didn’t forgive, these two souls may be married in the next life because the man owed the woman. This is called the “debts of love”, and the man must learn to benevolently serve the woman, even if she mistreats him. If the man doesn’t learn his lessons, quarrels can happen due to various issues, and the man will suffer more loss than the woman.
• Debts of money – In a past life, a man might have spent a lot of money dating a woman who did not reciprocate his feelings and only wanted material things from him. After benefiting from his money, she left him. In the next life, these same souls may be married. The woman may be either rich or poor, but in any case, the man will end up spending most of the woman’s money. This “debt of money” is being paid.

In the end, you may be destined to meet someone to pay off your karmic debts, but it would be unwise to blame them for your own wrongdoings.

You should forgive your partner, because it means forgiving yourself. If you retribute them for what they do to you, the cycle of hatred-retribution will keep continuing. Your “bond” will become a “bondage” lifetime after lifetime if you don’t learn to forgive.

Bonus: A Story of “Why You May Face Bad Lucks in Relationships”

There was a young couple who had always felt they were soulmates and twin flames. The man was Bob and the woman was Lucy. However, after a long time of dating, Bob left Lucy to marry another woman. Lucy was devastated and wanted to commit suicide as a result.

A monk walked by and saw that Lucy was about to kill herself. He tried to calm Lucy down by giving her a mirror and telling her to look at it.

Upon looking at the mirror, Lucy was transported to a seashore where she saw a dead man lying naked. She then saw a woman walked by the corpse, shaking her head, and left without hesitation. Next, she saw another woman, who was kinder, so she took off her jacket and covered the man. Lastly, she saw another woman approaching the corpse, who, at this time, felt compassionate for him, so she dug a grave for the man and carefully put his body there. 

The monk then warmly explained to Lucy that the dead man lying on the seashore was Bob in a past life. The second woman who covered him with her jacket was Lucy.

In this lifetime, Bob wanted to be Lucy’s lover to return her kindness thanks to what she did to him. He was genuinely grateful and thankful for what Lucy did. Yet the person whom Bob really wanted to devote his whole life to was the third woman who dug the grave for him.

After hearing this story, Lucy realized the karmic relationship between herself and Bob. When the debt was paid and the kindness returned, Bob had to move on to marry his true life partner who was destined for him.

Lucy learned to let go and did not have any ill feelings toward Bob. She also learned to treat people more kindly and compassionately to accumulate virtues, so her future relationship/marriage will be bright.