MARRIAGE

"Date them until you hate them"

Every semester, I seem to have a roommate who wants to spend all of their time with their boyfriend. This makes it so that I don't have as much of a relationship with them and they don't have a relationship with any of the other girls in our apartment. I understand that there is an understanding that when you love a person you want to spend all of your time with them, but this comes at a price. In my observations which coincides with what Brother Williams taught about how people who do this, seem to not go on dates. They do homework together, watch movies, and maybe cook dinner together but they don't go out on dates as often. Dates are important because it helps the couple come closer to one another without spending all of their time together. When you spend every possible moment together, you may get annoyed with them and feel like you have no space anymore. In order to help couples avoid these kinds of situations, it's important to limit the time spent together but there needs to be a balance. 

"Plan a marriage not a wedding" 

After the engagement, the priority is now the wedding. Yes, it is important to have a day dedicated to this new relationship, but it is not the most important thing. A wedding is just one day, while the marriage is rest of eternity. It is important that you learn how to communicate efficiently, have discussions about important things like money, children, careers etc before getting married. I understand wanting to have a beautiful wedding as well. It is a very special day and I would like to have good memories revolving that day, but if it becomes too expensive, too stressful, end up having to rely on your parents heavily for this wedding, then you need to cut some expenses to make it less expensive. Having parents pay for a large portion of the wedding may cause problems because you now feel like you owe them and they want to be more involved in your life than you'd like. Make sure that the wedding is not the only thing that you and your fiance are planning.   

Communication

Marriage is an important relationship for both parties involved. For another class, I had interview a couple that I think has a successful marriage. From this I learned that looks don't matter as much as I think they do. The most important part of their aspect was communcation. There were times in their marriage that their expecations were not at the same level. Early in their marriage, the wife would get angry while her husband was totally unaware of his wife's unmet expecations. She considered talking to her mother, her friends and her sisters about this problem and then thought that I should just talk to him about it. So she did, and they were able to work things out calmly and saved her a lot of stress and anger. Being able to communicate effectively with your spouse is really important because with out effective communication, there are a lot of gaps and assumptions and that doesn't help a couple grow together, rather keeps them apart. 

"Children" 

As a couple transitions to roles of mother and father it takes a toll on their marital satisfaction due but not limited to a number of reasons including stress, lack of sleep, and a drastic change to the normal routine. Ways to maintain a good marital relationship is to continue to go on daily dates, husbands should help their wives in caring for their children, and to have open discussions showing love and kindess toward one another about caring for their children and other things. Make sure to make time to do things that you love to do without your spouse. It is important to have time to yourself in order to be able to recharge and deal with the stresses of raising a family.