Going from being a single person to being married to someone else can literally change your life overnight. No matter how long you dated, courted, and were engaged before marriage. There is no way you can prepare for this type of change. It is interesting when you get married and all of a sudden you do not make any decisions on you own. Dinner? Someone else has an opinion that might not be the same as your own. Plans for holidays? There is now another family you need to fit into your plans. Thankfully, there are some ways to make this transition smoother, and if we make sure these are a priority, we will hopefully sail into our first few years of marriage without a huge problem.
First thing, engagement. Engagements are a big deal and should not be undermined. If you remember from my blog last week we talked about the steps of dating. Starting with dating, stepping into courtship, stepping into engagement, then finally stepping into marriage. If we are sliding from one of these things to the next the lines are blurred where the commitment is. When there is a big deal about the engagement the commitment level is increased. Also, when you run into marriage problems the women tend to look back at how the relationship started. If there are good, happy things to look back on, the marriages tend to work out in the long run. When she looks back and doesn’t even remember anything special happening, maybe just a conversation where they decided they’d get married, they tend to hold that against their spouse and have a harder time coping with marital problems. Traditionally, the man is the one who proposes. He gets down on one knee and asks her to marry him. The getting down on one knee is symbolic of being fully committed and sacrifice. It really is beautiful and should not be brushed aside.
There can be a problem with this still. The current generation is more caught up in the SHOW than the actual commitment. They want to make sure the entire engagement is perfect, and definitely documented either by photo and/or video. Not only for the engagement, but also the wedding day celebration. Thousands of dollars are spent on weddings, for the glam and the show of it. The meaning behind the sacred event that happened earlier in the day can be overshadowed by the party and celebration later. Maybe if we kept the wedding celebration more intimate with closer family and friends it would not be taking away from the actual wedding itself.
Finally, babies. Babies have proven to decrease the marital satisfaction in couples quite quickly after the babies are born. The trend usually goes; highly satisfied, baby, decrease in satisfaction, baby, more decrease in satisfaction, baby, decrease in satisfaction, levels out, kids move out, increase in satisfaction. I’m not saying this happens in every marriage, but it takes some real effort and knowledge to avoid this. The wife is usually stressed out because her workload at home has increased and works 24/7 to keep this child alive. The husbands stress levels go up as he finds a way to provide for this new baby, works all day, helps at night, and together they are putting every last little bit of energy they might have into this baby. They are not focusing on one another anymore. There is often a disconnect because the communication about important things decreases and they don’t even know if they are on the same page anymore.
I know that if we work with our spouse and with God through it all, it will be okay. There will be hard things, unimaginable trials, and babies that will change your world. Keep going, don’t throw in the towel, and marriage will prove to be the best thing ever!
Best of Family Relations 