Transitions into Marriage

What are some reasons that couples cohabitate? They consider it the next step before marriage, and as a marriage replacement. When cohabiting, you do not share: money, your family, your name, and there is no commitment. Men and women see cohabiting differently. Women see it as the next step before marriage. Men take it as the next step instead of going into marriage; a marriage replacement.

When we love someone, sometimes we spend as much time together as possible. What happens when we are young is we are dependent on our family for a lot things, such as making decisions. We grow up and go off on our own into the world and become independent. We start to make decisions for ourselves. Then, we get in a relationship and become interdependent working together. We should learn to not always rely on our families, we can do this, which in turn helps our future relationships.

If you are married, do you and your spouse have separate finances? If you do have separate finances, this could lead to separation of each other. There are different types of couples. Which do you see in your relationship?

            Devitalized: thinking about separation or divorce

            Financially Focused: agree on how to manage money

            Conflicted: unhappy about communication patterns and how they deal with conflict, but are satisfied with leisure activities and parenting of children.

            Traditional: strong in relationship with family and friends, but dissatisfied with communication patterns and sexual relationship

            Balanced: satisfied with activities, sex, children, and communication; yet have financial problems

            Vitalized: couple works through problems together

When you marry your spouse, you do not just marry the individual; you marry into their family as well. Is their family atmosphere positive, negative, or even stressful? In a marriage, we all have roles, rules, and expectations for the life you will live together, and even for your spouse. What are some adjustments that you and your spouse will have within the first month of being married to each other? Perhaps sharing a bed; maybe you like having your distance, or you don’t like to cuddle. How about a bathroom? And what about money? Growing up in our individual families, rules were made, we all played roles, and our parents had expectations. It is just the culture we grew up in, and all families have different cultures.

Before marriage, figure out the roles, rules, and expectations that you want your family to have. 

In some families, marital satisfaction goes down with every child that is born. The marital satisfaction levels out, then after the last child leaves home, it goes back up. Why is that? Well, sometimes the husband can start feeling that he is useless because the wife is tending to the child most of the time. The work load of the wife goes up 64%, and the husbands load goes up 37%. Even both of the spouse experience stress from the new events happening. So how can we avoid these problems? As a couple, assure that you love each other. If your marriage is having difficulties, look back on how you and your spouse fell in love. If you are the wife, look for opportunities to involve the husband with the baby before and after the infant is born. Express your gratitude to your spouse for all that he/she is doing. 

My wonderful parents 

Now marriage satisfaction does not have to go down. I talked with my mother on the matter of this subject. She said, "Dad and I are happy campers. We gave 100% to all seven children (we were not perfect parents, but we did our best). We are enjoying being empty nesters, and we are continually learning to be better than the day before. Like all marriages, it takes effort, work, sacrifice, and charity to have a healthy marriage relationship. You of course see the best in us, and sadly sometimes see us when we need to do better. With all you children gone, we have less contention in the house. Life is pretty easy and peaceful. We really enjoy our time together these days." 

When my mother was in high school, her parents divorced; so when she got married, she knew what she wanted in a marriage. Her and my father talked about the rules, roles, and expectations they want in their family. 

Know that you can make a marriage work, and have a good relationship with your family. From the example my parents have been to me, I know that I can make my future family work. I am so excited to apply what I am learning from this class to my future family.