Engagement and Marriage

Last week I strongly stressed process of dating, and eventually marrying. This week I will be talking more about the engagement and marriage process. Nowadays we see that the lines are blurred in the steps I previously had talked about. Rather than looking at it like steps leading up to something that we deliberately choose to, people are treating more like a slide to get to get to a destination that they think they want to be at. Not too long ago while my husband and I were hanging out with some friends, one of them brought up the subject of engagement. What he said made me think and it made me very sad. He said that he thought engagement meant that you were going to for sure get married, but he felt that in reality, it was a space of time that you just really, really hoped you were going to get to the point of being married without someone calling it off. THIS DOES NOT BELONG IN THE ENGAGEMENT STEP. Many of us are sliding through the steps of dating, courtship, engagement, and marriage that by the time we get to the end of the ride, we don’t know if we want to be there anymore.

            Engagement (warning: DON’T BE HERE IN THIS STEP IF YOU’RE NOT CERTAIN ABOUT GETTING MARRIED)! This is supposed to be an exciting time. This is a time where your relationship really begins to develop, and important conversations are had. These conversations are crucial to your future with the person that is most important to you. Where do you want to live? How many children to we want to have? What expectations do you have? How should we spend our money? All of these questions, and many more, should be asked in this step. It is important to understand what life will look like after you get married. Engagement is also a time to cut ties with mom and dad that you might have that are probably very strong. These ties must be cut in order for you to have a healthy marriage. Otherwise you might find yourself in a bit of a pickle when you call your parent for every fight that you and your significant other have. Parents should never come before or between spouses. This drives a wedge between husband and wife that can result in a lot of heartache and even divorce.

            Marriage!!! Yay you’ve made it to that wonderful, unforgettable day. Did you know that the average dollar amount spent on weddings nowadays is between $25,000 and $30,000? I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an awful lot of money spent on just one day. Now you’re probably thinking I’m a cynic, but that’s okay. I will try to shed some light on my cynicism. This high dollar amount is causing people to push back the date of getting married because it is believed that weddings need to be so expensive to get everything that you need. This can cause great amounts of stress in the relationship when two people are required to get one or two more jobs, resulting in less time spent wit each other, and even going into debt to your parents or in credit cards. At that point, it sounds like to me that you’re just planning a wedding, not a marriage.  

            At the early stages of marriage, it is important to find your footing in this new stage of life. Questions should be asked like who should do most of the chores to how do you want to handle disagreements are going to be asked, and needed to be decided upon. It’s okay to have disagreements at this stage, it shows that you are working things out and coming to a mutual understanding of each other. As your marriage changes and grows, so do the questions you ask each other. Not even the most perfect couple is exempt from the challenges of life, marriage, and family, so it is crucial that you always find room for each other. Your spouse should always come before anything that’s going on. Without that priority in mind you might just find yourself in a broken family.

            Moral of the story: Your spouse is your number one. They are your number one supporter, and you started this adventure together with the intention to see it to the end together. Don’t loose sight of that. Marriage is one of the most difficult things anyone will ever do, but it is so beyond worth it. The kind of love that two people have for each other to commit to spending the rest of eternity together is something that words cannot express, and science cannot quantify. What two people can find with each other is something worth defending, and worth fighting for.