What About Before Marriage?

So many failed marriages plus loveless marriages partly adds up to a hookup culture that is just about girls and boys looking for love in all the wrong places. Engagements got big as marriage lost its luster. It is really an ugly picture. Let’s think more. What about before marriage for a place to do better?

My teenage and young adult children are totally committed to abstinence before marriage as were my wife and I. We trust God in this. Like God, we think oneness is more important then sex, but sex after marriage does lead to fun learning together. All along you are learning to be loyal to each other.  My kids are facing real issues we can look at below. So, let’s think more of how we fail- and how to do better.

Americans marry because of love – the feeling that is. If that is all we have, then that is not very much as emotions can change from one second to the next and are not the easiest things to manage to 50 years of marriage. Maybe, we need to seek the right feeling in another way.

How Can You Get to the Same Page as Equals?

Do you share the same passion and some shared hobbies even? Are you anxious and your partner shy? The time before marriage is a time for the two of you to grow close enough to fight and long enough to irritate each other. Turn over as many stones as you can before marriage, Take more time.  You are making the most important choice of relationship that you will ever make. To get an enduring  base, you need a 20 year view of where you are going and what things that are important to you.

Do you want a house full of people and she wants a quiet place to herself? Think and talk about these things. Ask everything that is in your heart and tell everything in your heart that you can find as you pursue marriage.

Solving What About Before Marriage

Why? This person will be by your side for the rest of your life. Look closely at your lives. Consider one thing for sure.

Your childhood family and your spouse to be’s family are not the same. Those differences wi stay with you. How can you fit them carefully, fully, together and not run one over like a tank?

You can find richness in marriage via these differences but only if you put in the work. Marriage is an lot of work and the more you do and see before marriage the better. Other things will come up as life moves along, but beating more early is so worth the effort. To get married is to choose to change.  God wants you to keep growing and this person can help you grow the most in seeing the them and not just yourself. Might I note that transparency and teachability in both people is of great worth. Absolute gap in either will make things much harder.

See The Good Reasons for Stubbornness

Both of you need to relax about things that seem important and come toward a middle place where neither is the sacrificial lamb unwittingly. Find a way to see why your future spouse is stuck and not comprising. This person you love has an emotional trigger with this topic. Validate that emotion and see the good in that person. Find where they are stuck, and then when safe – try get to the middle. Don’t just totally give in.

To be one and Christ wants,  you both need to move toward the middle and you only can if the other person sees you first. Neither of you needs to be the bad guy. You have different triggers as are from different families.  Learn about this person you love and how to bring them to safety before you push too much.

Also, read about what to think as newlyweds.