My wife and I have been happily married 29 years and the advice my parents gave us before marriage rings loud and true to this day. It may not work for everybody, but it sure worked for us.
My parents gave me these 5 gems of wisdom, and admonished me to get aligned with my fiancé on them BEFORE marriage:
- Religion – two religious faiths or practices that contradict each other cannot co-exist over the long run, especially if one or the other partner holds deep convictions.
- Money – the issues are making money and spending money. Get comfortable enough with each other that it doesn’t matter who is the breadwinner. Yes guys, can you accept that your wife is the breadwinner or makes more money than you? Spending….if you’re not comfortable with your partner’s spending habits, your marriage will suffer.
- Sex – lots of angles to this topic, but the essence was… never use sex as a weapon. Never withhold sexual pleasure from your partner as a means to manipulate or achievment of some selfish end. – Checkout the bible on this one: 1 Corinth 7:5. I interpret that passage to mean withholding sexual gratification from your spouse opens the marriage to the temptation to pursue that gratification somewhere else.
- Children. How many, when, discipline philosophy etc. Plan now and keep your covenant regarding children. This one seems kind of obvious, but when young couples find themselves dealing with a pregnancy, it always seems to be a surprise.
- In Laws – get as far away as possble from all in laws early in the marriage. My wife and I actually moved away from all relatives…from New York to California right after we married. We needed to make it as difficult as possible for our families to come between us. Also it challenged us to work through our problems together and alone. AND (get this one guys) made it tough for her to leave the house and run home to mom when things got rough.
- Bonus Commentary – a young couple needs to grow together, to experience the ups and downs, and work it out. We have an Overcomers Ministry in our church, dealing with drug addiction and substance abuse. We find that one of the biggest obstacles an addicted person faces is the misplaced intrusion of family members in the healing process. The wrong kind of love actually enables the addiction.Same in marriage. The natural thing for a mother (or father) to do is provide an outlet for a child to escape challenges and difficult circumstances. One of those misplaced acts of love is for a mother to encourage a daughter to come home if its not working out. If the situation is not life threatening, that’s the wrong advice in my opinion. I can tell you first hand, moving 3000 miles from everyone, with God’s hand on our marriage, immeasurably strengthened our bond because we forced ourselves to work it out. And because we did, there’s nothing, no problem, no situation we can’t handle today.
2nd Hand Advice 