Look Before You Leap!

Know that you are going to have problems in marriage. In fact, it's an absolute guarantee. Book it, Dan-O! You will have challenges in your new lifelong relationship. There's nothing you can do to keep that fact from becoming a reality. However, there are ways you can minimize many of the problems a couple can have in a marriage.

One of the best things you can do is to discuss your expectations. Each individual comes into a marriage with a tremendous amount of expectations. It's just human nature. Men come in with certain ideals about marriage--what they think a typical day of married life should look like. At the same time, women enter this permanent relationship with an entirely different set of dreams. Most of all of these expectations are formed by what was observed in one's own home while growing up. However, most likely, the family of your spouse was different than your own family growing up. As an example, maybe one person was raised in a very strict environment, while the other family had a much more laid-back approach.

Since expectations are typically quite different between married partners, it just makes sense that conflict is going to be inevitable in marriage. However, the more you can discuss these differing expectations together in an intentional way, the better your chance of working harmoniously with these differences.

How important is conflict resolution? Very important! It's vital to learn how to resolve every bit of conflict that you can. You do this through heartfelt communication, honesty, and self-sacrifice. However, we often point out that marriage expert John Gottman has determined after years of marriage study that 69% of marital conflict is not resolvable. If this is true, then it's important to learn how to live with those things in the marriage that will continue to challenge a couple--to learn how to adapt to those ongoing differences and give one another grace. For more on overcoming gridlock, check out Gottman's book The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work.

Burying your differences (not talking about them or dealing with them) will destroy any relationship. Simply getting married with the hope that those differences will just fade away with your new permanent love commitment is both naive and destructive. However, the good news is that successful marriages have plenty of problems and challenges! But these couples have learned how to navigate through most or all of those issues together. That's the key.

This is why good premarital counseling is so important. Unfortunately, for a lot of reasons, many people avoid getting counseling during the key transitions of their lives. Not good! Do yourself a favor and seek out support. Your future marriage is too important. Statistics show that married couples that have had biblical premarital counseling before tying the knot have much higher success rates than those couples that ignore that opportunity.

We simply want to give you and your future marriage the greatest possible chance of succeeding. Our advice is that all engaged couples seek out good premarital counseling close to them. Many churches offer free or low-cost training. It's relatively painless, even fun, and it's so worth it. You'll never regret the investment you will make in what can be a satisfying lifelong relationship together.