Humans are naturally selfish, and our culture is a very selfish culture so this trait is amplified in most people. But marriage, a marriage that is happy and healthy has to have two people who are willing to become LESS SELFISH. Each has to desire to grow in LOVE. Love is sacrificial giving. Which is antithetical to our nature. But it is necessary and our souls actually desire to grow in character and we become better people by learning to love well.
FIRST! ARE YOU AN ADULT?
Are you ready for marriage? A checklist
- Are you ready to be committed and true to you partner?
- Do you have something to give?
- Low maintenance -able to deal with your emotions.
- Are you working and able to support yourself?
- Do you pay your bills on time?
- Are you able to communicate and work through issues with family and work?
- Can you take care of yourself (cook, clean, health)?
- Are you able to discern between good and bad friendships?
- Are you emotionally stable and able to maintain good relationships?
- She/he should not have to check your phone or question your word.
- Are you TRUSTWORTHY? If not you are NOT an ADULT!
You might be 30years old, but you are really a 17 yo in a 30 year old body.
It is time to grow up.
If not don’t date yet. Work on it.
Let’s Reverse Engineer the Top Reasons for Marriage to Help you NOT to get Divorced!
Top Reasons for Divorce
1. Commitment
2. Communication
3. Cheating
4. Chores (wife), Finances (husband)
1. Commitment is the quality of being dedicated to a cause, an agreement or pledge to do something in the future.
Most couples do not understand what it truly takes to make a marriage work. Commitment is putting in the work, effort and heart to continue to make the marriage work. They fell in love, which was actually romantic love based on endorphins and physical attraction and an optimistic viewpoint.
The marriage vows are a pledge of commitment. I take you (wife/husband) for better or worse, sickness and health, for richer or poorer, til death do us part.
You Can Learn to Commit
Become aware of the area you are lacking in or where you are weak, and be willing to change. Focus on that area and commit to improving it which builds character! Most people do not talk about the benefit of marriage improving our character. We grow exponentially as a married couple, we learn to give and sacrifice in ways we never thought we would be able to do. This is the hard part of marriage, where the two become one that most couples have problems in.
Excellent article “The Five Levels of Commitment” by Howard Partridge
2. Communication is the ability to explain what you are feeling and what is important to you. It is a two way process of exchanging ideas, feelings, thoughts, ideals between people to build understanding. This also includes non-verbal cue like facial expressions, stance, arms crossed or a big smile, hugs.
You Can Learn to Communicate
3. Cheating is betraying your spouse. Being sexual with someone other than your spouse, but also sharing yourself in ways that are reserved for your marriage relationship such as looking sexually at someone else; revealing your innermost being with someone who is not your spouse. Giving your affection, attention and love to someone other then your spouse.
You Can Learn to Be Completely Faithful
4. Chores (wife): The fourth reason wives file for divorce is over chores. Husbands and men are like, “I completely do not understand what she is talking about?”. But they are both working full time jobs and yet the wife is still expected to cook, clean, take care of the children, do all the scheduling like doctors appointments and making sure the kids get to where they need to be and unfortunately the husband tends to be another child and doesn’t love his wife as he should and help her because she is drowning.
4. Finances (husband): The fourth reason husbands file for divorce is because the wife is not hearing the husband when he’s saying honey we can’t afford that, or your spending to much! She just continues to spend and gets the family in a financial crisis and then the husband has to figure out a way to pay for her excess purchases. The wife is not loving her husband as she should and understand and hear what he is saying. She’s acting like a child and being irresponsible and putting their family into a financial crisis.
Husbands Can Learn To Help With Chores
Wives Can Learn to Spend Responsibly
WHAT KIND OF PERSON ARE YOU?
I stopped saying, “what are you going to be when you grow up?”,
to asking
“What kind of person do you want to be Iike when you grow up?”.
Your character affects your life much more the your job or career.
Be the kind of person you are looking to marry! Do you want to marry someone who is: Loving, kind, hard working, forgiving, committed, trust worthy and loyal? Be that kind of person! If your not -work in it!
BAGGAGE
What are you bringing into your marriage? We all carry baggage. What’s honestly in your baggage? Unpack it and take time to honestly look at it and access they good, the bad and the ugly. You WILL be bringing into your marriage.
If you have experienced excessive hurt, emotional and physical, you have never learned to communicate, you just stuff your negative emotions down and then explode latter on. If you blame everything on one person and not deal with each individual who hurt you. If you are stuck in an area. If you have been a victim of sexual abuse, exposed to pornography, if you have been manipulated or you manipulate, neglected so you don’t understand how to properly care for someone else. If you are insecure and attention seeking, acknowledge it and work on it.
When you can get married you can have a beautiful relationship if you can acknowledge that you have these areas and start to deal with them. My husband and I had a bunch of problem areas, but we worked together and with God to address them. You don’t deal with everything at once and say, I’m perfect now! I honestly think God designed marriage to help us learn how to love. How to love someone when we’re disappointed in them, when our needs are not being met. When we’re weak and broken to receive love and forgiveness. Marriage itself is a great mystery. God could have designed us to be unisex, where we didn’t need anyone outside of ourselves. But instead God made us in such a way that we have to constantly working on our relationship where stuff has to be dealt with daily! Choosing to love, forgive, be kind, compassionate, thoughtful, be strong and stand, gentle. Learn how to depend on God and honestly pray for help.
When I was thinking about my husband before we were married, I thought about those areas that drove me crazy (and him with me) and times it by ten and thought could I live with him then? The answer was YES! We were like two puzzle pieces that fit together. He knew my weak places that would drive him crazy and they do-still. But I wouldn’t want to be with any other person to work all this out with.
I believe God made marriage to make us into better people.
We’re not lone wolves who go about by ourselves and do what ever we want, however we want,
But we learn to work things through, listen, really listen to the another person, understand what is important to them – put someone before ourselves.
The BIG thought – WE are NOT the center of the universe. We are important, a unique individual created by God, but we are NOT God! God is the center of the universe and God has placed others in our lives for a multitude of reason. One is to make us finer better people.
So now that we have covered some on the important aspects of being a human and carrying around a lot of baggage – are you ready? Are you ready to share this journey of life with someone? An imperfect loved one who will walk this out with you? Who you will pick up when they fall? Who will pick you up when you fall? Who you will LEARN how to love, be concerned for and care for our spouse before your self.
Marriage Mind Set Should Be:
We have something to GIVE. That should be our thought process. Who can I give all my love, affection and attention to? Both people should bring something into a marriage.
Man-take care of, protect, provide love his wife in a way NO ONE else can.
Woman- take care of support, support emotionally, love and care about and for, affection, attention and concern that NO ONE else can.
-Any philosophy of thought that divides men and women are tools in satans hand. (Feminism/red pill) We are actually made for each other. If you can not see that or comprehend that then you are being disingenuous or so brainwashed that you really have to go back of the basics of biology, and read Genesis 2:15–25.
-We are all fallible, and our human nature is sinful so we will have struggles, but if we are WILLING God will help us to be joined together as He designed us to be.
Are you ready to BUILD something together
that would not exist
UNLESS you and your spouse got married
and built it TOGETHER!
A Unique Creation: YOUR FAMILY!
Marriage is building a LIFE together. Each spouse adding and building and making something beautiful…a home, a family filled with love and concern for each other.
Today’s modern culture thinks wrong…at (Trad Wives be like) home wives saying stuff like, My husband pays for me to stay home and take care of him????” WRONG THINK!
Traditional Women Think: My husband brings home the bacon, but I cook it! We are a TEAM! each role is important and has EQUAL VALUE! We are equal, but different. I valued my husbands hard work, and he valued mine. We did end up doing everything differently at different times in life. It came natural. If my husband wasn’t home, I brought out the garbage or had one of the kids do it. When I wasn’t home my husband would cook or get pizza. No biggy it wasn’t a big deal. The big deal is that we WORKED TOGETHER.
Both of our hearts were in building a family and meeting the needs of our family together.
A family is more like a football or basketball team than a swim team. Lots of moving pieces working together getting everything done. It’s a joy most of the time, and hard lots of the time but worth it all the time, irregardless of the hard work and effort necessary it get everything done.
Why do we think it’s going to be easy. Any thing worthwhile in life is hard. It takes hard work to become a lawyer or doctor, hard work to build a million or billion dollar cooperation. why do we think it’s going to be easy to build a healthy happy family. It takes a different kind of effort. An effort that is on a deeper level than running a huge company or successfully saving a persons life in a fire. It’s more raw and vulnerable. We can have a billion dollar company but no one really knows us at our core-we can resuscitate a baby and save its life but they don’t KNOW who we really are. But a wife, husband, children…they really see us. at the core of who we are. Being with our family connects us on a deeper more meaningful level. The essence of who we truly are will be exposed and we will be stretched to be a better more giving person.We don’t use those character muscles as often. We never needed that kind of patience, forgiveness or perseverance before.When we reveal ourselves in such a truly vulnerable way and it’s not received correctly the hurt is deeper than any hurt we can receive, except by our parents. But a loving happy home with God’s help can heal your hurts for your parents.
It Takes about 200-300 Hours to Plan a Wedding
How Long Do You Take To Plan Your MARRIAGE?!
Once you realize that this is indeed the person you want to marry. You should start prioritizing to start planning our married life together. Most people do not do that and then they say marriage is horrible don’t get married but they haven’t spent 1 hour not even one hour preparing for their married life!
Why is the divorce rate so high, because couples have not spent any time in understanding what it actually takes to make a marriage work.
People say, “Your lucky you got a great marriage.” But I don’t believe in luck. Luck is simply where preparation meets opportunity.
RESOURCES:
Practical Ways To Prepare For Marriage
Are We Really Adulting? Navigating Responsibilities, Finances, and More
Book Excerpt READ: The 200 Hours from Now Until I Say, “I Do!”
It combines “Wedding Planning” with “Marriage Planning“.
It helps engaged couples practice communication, compromise and understanding what is truly important in life. It gives them the tools to bring into their marriage to fix any problem they might have.