MARRIAGE PREP

Three principles of Preparing for Marriage.

1. The things you do now while dating affect your future marriage.

2. It’s important to pace the relationship and not do certain things before others.

3. Willingness to sacrifice is a key characteristic in healthy marriages.

The way that you date now, and the things that you do in your dating relationships affect your future marriage. It may not seem like it, but the way that you treat the people you date and the things that you do will affect your future marriage, and people do not change once they get married.  Oftentimes, the good goes bad and the bad gets worse. If you see people as objects to be used to fulfill your desires, you will have a very difficult time not bringing that into the marriage. You will end up using your marriage partner to fulfill your desires, which shouldn’t be the case. You are to love and respect the person you marry. If, in your dating relationship, there wasn’t a whole lot of dating going on and it was mostly “hanging out” don’t expect that to change when you get married. It is so important to practice essentially the type of marriage you would want to have, right now. If you want to have a good marriage, don’t ignore the red flags when you are dating. Be sure to think about the type of person you want to marry, and date that type of person.

There is a good way to go about having a relationship, and a not so good way to go about having a relationship. A relationship includes five basic elements: know, trust, rely, commitment, and touch. It is important to keep these elements in this order and to have each one play a more prominent part in the relationship than the one after it. For example, you do not trust someone in a relationship more than you know them. Do not have so much physical touch before you are committed to them, which doesn’t come until after you know them, and can trust and rely on them.  In doing this, you are able to pace the relationship, and you will definitely have a more successful relationship than were you to not do these things.  It helps to keep things in check and to not have a skewed view of the relationship, and help you see red flags to help you know if the relationship is healthy or not and know whether or not to continue. As you do this, you are in a much better position to have a happy, healthy relationship, which will lead to happier, healthier marriage!

A willingness to sacrifice will make any relationship better, but it is absolutely vital in a happy and healthy marriage. “Not until love requires sacrifice does it even earn the right to be called love.” You need to love someone, more than you love yourself. When you take yourself out of the equation, when you stop wondering when you are going to get what you want and instead, choose to focus on others, that is when you will feel truly happy. If you focus on your marriage partner and desire to do what will make them happy which will entail some sacrifice, your marriage will become that much better. Two people who are committed to serving each other and making one another happy will have a marriage that is through the roof!