This summer will mark our 30th year of marriage. We’re certainly not the same people now that we were when we wed. We’ve been through a lot together and grown both individually and as a couple. While some of that learning needed to come over time, there are certain things that I wish we could have known early in our marriage. So that got me wondering… What do you know now that you wish you had known early on in your marriage? Specific, actionable things. No matter if you are on your first marriage or your third, I’m sure you have valued thoughts to share. What is your perspective?
Please reply to this blog so that we can start some conversations and share thoughts as a larger community. We’d like to use your feedback in an upcoming class with newly marrieds. Thanks in advance for your help!
It’s not only ok, but necessary to ask for help as a couple, when you have marital problems. And the help needs to come from older, wiser, Christian couples in successful marriages. My husband and I have taken in-depth marriage enrichment classes, whether we “needed” them or not, and have committed to each other that we will be open to marriage counseling should we ever feel the need. But now our friends are starting to divorce, and they are admitting that if they ever sought help at all as a couple, they sought it only after spending years trying to solve the problems quietly, by themselves – and it is simply too late in their opinion to fix things. So the lesson is . . . don’t keep problems a secret! Determine early in your marriage that you will not be too proud to seek Godly counsel and lean on your Christian family when you have marital struggles . . . because everyone WILL have some.
So in my vast experience as a married individual… wait a minute. Nevermind. I’m still living in the “then”. Don’t listen to me, but my advice is every day you have to choose your attitude. Choose to love your spouse before your feet touch the floor. Choose to never give up. On days you are close to breaking, choose to make it one more day. Most importantly though? Listen to the other people posting who actually have experience and ignore the young buck that I am (6 months married).
A few things, one, you can not change someone else – ever. Even if they desire to change for you, only they can change (I will add that only a personal relationship with God can bring about a real change in a person). With that being said, you CAN change yourself. Like the famous quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Be the change you want to see in your marriage. Two, I wish we had known our love languages (Gary Chapman), many times couples are expressing love to one another in different ways and neither one is feeling the love at all because they speak different love languages! I thinks that’s why you so often hear people say, “I don’t know what happened, we just fell out of love.” Three, make divorce a non-option. Don’t ever threaten it in a fight, don’t ever say it jokingly, take if off the table from day one. Four, children are the worst thing that ever happened to my marriage! Of course that’s a little tongue in cheek, but I wish I would have known how a great couple relationship can go south fast when you add the stress of children and trying to decide on a unified parenting style. Lastly, I agree with Andrew the young married buck 🙂 You must CHOOSE each day to love your spouse. You won’t always want to, and it will not always be easy, but choose to dwell on their positive qualities and if you can’t think of any that day, choose to love them anyway!
You never “win” an argument with your spouse… ever…