26 IMPORTANT THINGS TO DISCUSS BEFORE MARRIAGE
Bisi Adewale
26 IMPORTANT THINGS TO DISCUSS BEFORE MARRIAGE
Before you go into that marriage, there are many things to discuss with your beloved to make your journey easier and gain better understanding of each other.26 IMPORTANT THINGS TO DISCUSS BEFORE MARRIAGE
GOD: Who is he in your life? You need to discuss this and the roles you will need God to play in your life, stating your relationship with Him. If you don’t agree on this, your marriage may be turbulent if you go ahead.
PURPOSE: What is your purpose in life? What is the reason why you are on earth? You need know this and discuss it with your spouse to be and listen to his or hers too.
VALUES: You need to discuss about your values and set of moral beliefs.
Everyone has their own set of values. While most values don’t differ too much, one thing to discuss before marriage is what values are most important to each of you. Then, you can decide what values you will share as a family and build your family on that.
VISION: Does he know what your future vision and goals are? Do you know his? If you are career minded and plan to put all you have into work for the next six years so you can get a certain promotion or make a certain amount of money, he or she needs to know this. Share your vision about the future, finances and about your children together and marry your vision before you get marry.
SECRETS: There is no better time to share these intimate and secret things than now. As you look ahead to marriage, share family secrets and challenges. Don’t keep your partner in the dark about your family issues. He or she should marry you for your liabilities and assets if he or she truly loves you. Discuss personal choices, health challenges, problems, mental health concerns, debts, past relationship, addictions. This is the time to share things big and small, paving the way for honesty, transparency and openness as the foundation of your marriage.
CAREER: You need to talk about your career, educating each other about its demands, challenges and what it takes to get to the top there. Your level of commitment should also be discussed. Do you live to work or work to live? How will your respective careers affect family life? Who comes first, career or family? Do you have more schooling and apprenticing to finish? Is there a professional course to be done? If so, what’s the time frame for completing these steps toward obtaining the kind of job you hope for? What kind of personal sacrifices will you and whosoever marries you would have to make to enable you to climb the career ladder to the top?
CHILD BEARING: Discuss children, how many and the time you want to start having them, taking note of the spacing. Discuss about child care, where the child will be when you go to work and so on.
CHURCH ATTENDANCE: You should discuss about the church to attend, his or hers or another church entirely. How committed you will be in Church should also be discussed.
LOVE LANGUAGES: Your love languages should also be discussed. By love language we mean what someone may do to make you feel loved. This differs from individual to individual. Some of it are:
- Words of affirmation: Continuing to say how much one cares and loves the other person.
- Acts of service: This is helping the person to do things, serving the person in love.
- Giving gifts: Gifts of any kind that come constantly make many feel loved.
- Quality time: Spending time together makes some feel loved more than any other thing. For someone like this, giving gifts without staying with them may never make them feel loved.
- Physical touch: For some, it is touching, hugging, kissing, holding of hands and such gestures that spell physical closeness that make them feel loved.
You need to discuss extensively and know your beloved love language and use this vital information to win his or her love all the days of your marital life. You should also tell your spouse to explore your own love language too.
WEAKNESSES: Getting to know your beloved weaknesses will help you a lot in handling him or her. Before you enter the pressure-cooker of marriage, you need to get rid of your bad habits and hang-ups here and now. Do you have some luggage you are yet to drop, do you have some weaknesses? Do you have a tendency to express anger through rage? Do you struggle with any addictive behaviour? Are there any areas in your life that you need to expose and address before you move forward toward marriage? Take the time to talk frankly and honestly about your struggles, and make the time to work toward hope and healing. Pray about your weaknesses together and allow God to be your strength as you help each other to grow to become what you should be before God.
YOUR EXPECTATIONS: Because expectations are such deep-seated parts of who we are, we don’t often think about them. Talk about your expectations from a wife or husband, what you expect about money, sex, communication, love, romance, spiritual life, and career and so on. Talking about these things gives us a chance to bring them to the surface in a constructive way. What are your views on work, family, and marriage roles? How will you do the cooking, cleaning and other chores? This is just skimming the surface of the things we may expect while going into marriage, and it’s an important conversation to have.
HOW TO FIGHT: Talk about how to fight fair, how to talk when you disagree. Abusive words and curses should be left out no matter the offence or misunderstanding. Physical abuses too, like slapping and beating. So, discuss before marriage how you can approach problems maturely without allowing a situation to get out of control. Also figure out what topics are likely to generate friction. Avoid such in order to fight fair, and mark a conducive moment when to talk to each other to get the best out of your discussions.
BELIEFS: Discuss about your beliefs in healing, religion, prayer, marriage, sex, love, tithing, giving and so on.
HEALTH: Talk about your health, past sicknesses, medication you are using, their side effects, present health challenges, sicknesses in your family and so on.
FAMILY MEMBERS: Talk about your family members, stating the whole truth about them, so that he or she may know how to handle them.
FAMILY OBLIGATIONS: You need to let your beloved know how committed you are to your family members. How much time do you spend with them now, or how much do you expect to spend with them once you’re married and possibly have children? You may also need to talk about how much time you expect your spouse to spend with them. Make it clear if you can’t do without your family. And how will this affect your spouse? You need to let your beloved know this before you go into marriage and you should know the commitment of your spouse too to his or her family.
MONEY: You need to talk about finance. Will there be a joint account? Who handles financial decisions at home? Do you have any debt, mortgage, recurrent bills, vows, subscription, and obligations and so on? What kinds of budgeting will you be using, bank and will the woman work? Will it be my money, your money or our money? Discuss this deeply, because money issues are a potential flash point in marriage.
BEDROOM: Are you going to stay in the same or separate rooms? Will your children stay in the same room with you and at what stage will they have their own rooms? Please, talk about this.
THE PLACE OF TELEVISION: Will you allow television in your room? How many hours will you be watching television a day? What manners of programme do you think is not okay for your family?
PAST RELATIONSHIPS: Share your past relationships. Any child involved? Any abortion?
PAST LIFE: Discuss your past failures and successes, sex abuse or rape, challenges and victories, relationships and battles.
PARENTING BACKGROUND: Talk about your relationship with your parents. Were you abused as a child? And, are you close to them or you in battles with them? What parenting style did you experience: bullying, pampering or gross indulgence of your desires? Are they clingy? Or, do you rather think they will easily release you? Who are you closer to, dad or mum?
TEMPERAMENT: You need to know your temperament and that of your beloved. The weaknesses and strengths of temperaments should be seriously discussed.
PRAYER STYLE: Do you believe in loud prayers or silent ones? Will prayer be daily, or comes occasionally? Will there be midnight prayer or will it just be during the day?
PHONE USAGE: Can you pick each other’s call? What will be the budget for telephone communication every month? Will chatting be okay in the house when you are together in the night?
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT: Talk about the method for conflict management. Can you report each other to anybody and who will that be? Talk about forgiveness, reconciliation and fighting fair.26 IMPORTANT THINGS TO DISCUSS BEFORE MARRIAGE
Pastor Bisi Adewale is a family and relationship expert; author of Secret of Irresistible Wife and more than 70 other books on marriage and family life. You can reach him on familybooster@gmail.com, 08068312004, 08051512823, BB: 2AF5C883, Blog: www.bisiadewale.com, Website:www.familybooster.com facebook.com/PastorBisiAdewale.Twitter@bisiadewale
