Preparing for marriage

 As we have been discussing this week just as there is a process from dating to marriage but marriage itself has its own transition since despite what some people may believe especially early marriage is a set of transitions from two completely separate lives to a combined life that each share with each other. Even the process of getting married can and does greatly affect the future marriage. For example many people's weddings are far more expensive than they need to be and affect it in various ways. If they take a loan to have an expensive wedding you are intentionally sabotaging your marriage. Why start a relationship in debt that serves no purpose. Another is waiting and saving up but should put off developing your relationship for a needlessly expensive wedding. Just a few examples of how even how we start our marriage can greatly influence which direction it takes. 

One of the other dangers is knowing if this is what we should do most when going into marriage. At one point or another the question is, is this the person that I want to marry and spend my life with? This part of where the R.A.M model comes in. It isn’t flawless but if used properly greatly diminishes the chances of major future romantic relationship problems because by the time you are considering committing to them in marriage you will have seen many side of them and learned a bit of who they really are from their friends and family. 

We also have so much to prepare for the complexity that comes with merging the lives of two different individuals on every level which leads to clashes not because you hate each other but because of how different most people are from one another. A great example is something as simple as sleeping that can be difficult at first because of how different our sleeping habits can be. Some people are heavy sleepers and would be fine as long as they sleep first but because they sleep later have a difficult time sleeping because they prefer a cool bed and pillow with few sheets but their spouse is a light sleeper with lots of blankets and moves around or snores when they sleep. An I am not saying any of this to dissuade someone from marriage but bring up the reality that all of us have our own individual quirks or habits that we don’t even stop to think about but to someone you suddenly live with consider completely crazy despite how that is how you or they always have been for years. And there are tons of other easy examples such as food you like that they don’t and vice versa on top of one potentially being way healthier that could cause simple conflict or the bathroom where you put things that should and should not be there just to name a few. But from this we see that despite all our differences no one is bad or good, just different with a likely completely different perspective and family culture. But the opposite can also be true. Sometimes we can be much more alike than we think, only different from a slightly different paradigm on something you may both agree on. 

At the end of the day marriage is a wonderful thing to look forward to and something all of us should someday look forward to in our future but if we don’t prepare ourselves properly we can start on a path to disaster before we are even married. So give ourselves the best possible start given our circumstances and prepare for the bumps of transition we prepare the path to a successful and beautiful marriage.