Are You Ready For Marriage?
W
ell, the truth is that you can't ever be 100% sure about anything so if you are feeling unsure, you’re fine…it’s completely natural! However, there are a few key issues that you can consider in order to help you clarify what you really think and feel about getting married and your relationship.
Your Relationship
- Do you seek each other out when you need advice, and more importantly, do you feel better about things afterward you’ve spoken?
- Are you able to support each other’s decisions and truly understand and accept why your partner made the decision in the first place?
- How well do you think you communicate with each other, for example, can you express your feelings and fears clearly and freely?
- Are you able to resolve your fights without leaving behind any residual resentment?
- Have you discussed your relationship with regards to the hard times that may lie ahead, and that you have chosen to stick together no matter what?
- Do you really like, admire and respect each other for who you are NOW not who you think the other person has the potential to be one day?
- Do you have some friends and interests in common?
- Do you have similar spending/saving habits, or have you discussed how you'll each compromise your individual ways of approaching these issues?
- Are you aware of each other's total present debt and investments or savings?
- Have you discussed how you will merge your finances once you get married, and are you both comfortable with the plan? For example, do you have similar income goals?
- Do you have similar definitions for your ideas of what a comfortable home entails?
Sex
- Are your sexual needs compatible?
- Are you comfortable with giving and taking sexual suggestions and requests from each other?
- Is birth control something you consider a joint responsibility, and have you have openly discussed your options and preferences?
- Do you use sex as a healthy, fun and healing expression of your love, not as a way to gloss over problematic issues, problems or disputes?
- Do you know about each other’s sexual history?
Family
- How well do you get along with each other’s family members’?
- Are you willing to treat each other as your most important familial relationship after you get married?
- Have you discussed your religious/spiritual beliefs or how to incorporate them into your future family?
- Have you discussed how you feel about children? (Having them, raising them, how you feel about discipline and so on?)
- If you have children from a previous marriage, does your fiancé/e treat them with respect?
- Have you considered not only the future responsibility of caring for each other, but also the possibility of caring for each other’s parents or other family members?
Well done for answering these questions openly and honestly, they provide much food for thought! If you found the questions easy to answer with a big fat “YES!” or at least the majority of them anyway, well then, that’s wonderful! Congratulations, it seems you are well on your way to creating a beautiful partnership together!
If you found the questions quite difficult to answer as a whole, or if you found yourself thinking, "Ummmm…no, we don't/can't/should do that" then it might be best to wait a while before getting married. Perhaps you and your fiancé/e do have exactly what it takes to live a long and happy life together, but it is a good idea to discuss and decide upon the major issues that will inevitably come up once you get married… before you get married.
All of us, at Celebration.co.za, wish you all the very best!
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