Tuesday, July 03, 2007
is marriage worth it
im single...no boyfriend or anything. but marriage is super scary. someday i really want a husband and a family. but sometimes i see people in aweful marriages and it makes me wonder if it is worth it. my friend is thinking about getting married. i see red flags like mad. things arent good now and i dont see them getting any better. I feel like shes settling. Thats one thin i dont wanna do is settle, but how to do you when its right? I know my past relationships werent right. because when i get out of them im happier than when i was in them. is it right when you are the happiest with the person? i mean there are always going to be fights im sure...but how many fights are too many. im thankful to know people in good relationships. the couple im living with right now, i see how perfect they are for eachother. but those that dont work, or where people are miserable, make me worry. I mean God gives us life to enjoy. what happens if we are stuck and cant enjoy anymore.... hummm. I've been told not to settle. and i dont think marriage should be settling. it is a blessing from God. its a gift. and you never settle on a gift...but im getting challenged by "love". the more relationships i have the more i realize i know nothing about true love between and man and a woman. hummm. so these are my thoughts. im not sad, or bitter or anything. life is the best it has ever been, these are just my ponderings. :D
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3 comments:
Don't settle. I think people get in "red flag" relationships because they haven't had the experience to see the warning signs, recognize them for what they are, and choose to exit the relationship for their own well-being.
Sometimes they have a fantasy that the other person will change, or they don't have the maturity to be able to set proper boundaries.
There are books and classes people can take to learn these things, so that they don't have to be learned by unfortunate experience.
Of course, if you get two people together who both have problems, then that's even worse. The best thing is when people can address some of their major issues before marriage, and perhaps avoid problems after the fact.
Marriage isn’t always easy. It takes a lot of dedication to work through problems and not give up. People in bad marriages (in my opinion) got there because they didn't (and still don’t) take the time to work out many issues prior to being married, and neither one of them has learned how to properly handle conflict within a marriage. Kirstin and I are very blessed to have been put on the right path by the people in our lives, and we have done our best to stay on that path by doing what’s necessary to make sure we stay on it. Being together nearly four years prior to getting married was probably a big help for Kirstin and me. Not that everyone needs to wait that long, but we certainly had a few good reasons. A Christian premarital counseling course was also extremely helpful. I can't count the number of times we thought back to those sessions during the first year or so of our marriage. Getting involved in relationships with other married couples who are supportive and who are willing to help you learn from their mistakes is also a huge help. Each year we took time to go to our previous church's annual married couples retreats. Those retreats not only gave us dedicated time to spend with each other to learn more about each other, but they also offered us a ton of great advice. Things such as the Love-Respect circle within a marriage, setting up reasonable expectations, and how to have fair fights/arguments.
There's a plethora of resources out there to help make sure marriages work. I think the problem lies in that it takes personal responsibility for individuals and couples to seek out those resources and implement the lessons being taught. Personal responsibility is fading fast in our society. I firmly believe that many more marriages could be saved if people would only take the time to learn how to have reasonable conflict resolution, and not be so quick to give up.
Marriage is a good thing because it was instituted by God. Things that I've learned/am learning is that communication & conflict resolution are probably the most important pre & post marriage things a couple needs to learn. A big problem comes in when people have distinct value differences. If this is the case, my opinion is that they should refrain from marriage. We went through a pre-marriage counseling, which helped get us on the right track with conflict resolution etc. We also experimented with pre-pre-married (you could call it relationship counseling) to see if we even wanted to pursue marriage. We talked values, life goals, marriage, kids, current issues we were having in our relationship etc. It was good for us. We went in knowing that we were on the same page. Yay.
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