Integrating Life After The Wedding

 This week I have been learning about integrating your life when you get married. It’s amazing because I am about to get married myself on April 30th so it’s so good for me to learn all of this now so that way when we get married we both have tools to help us. 

This week I learned that people tend to plan for weddings but in the process, they don’t plan their marriage. I have loved planning all the things for my fiancé and I’s wedding, but we both haven’t lost sight that the wedding is one day but our marriage is forever. We continually still talk about what our goals are and even talk about raising kids together. The more you know about your partner and the more you can see them in different environments, the better it will be for your marriage. If you see bad habits or tendencies it’s good to discuss them now rather than thinking your partner won’t be like that or will change when you get married. Women tend to go into marriages thinking that things will change. When things don’t change it becomes hard for the woman to not say anything until she finally becomes fed up with it that she explodes. Because the woman didn’t communicate to her partner that what he did bothered her, he had no idea it was a problem so obviously he didn’t change. I learned that you shouldn't hold things in until there is a crisis. It’s better to communicate with your partner so you can resolve it together. For example, say my fiancé never picks up his clothes, so for a while I just picked them up thinking that he will change and will be better at picking them up himself. But because I didn’t ask him if he could pick up his clothes, he had no idea that it bothered me. So one day when I am fed up picking up his clothes and I yell at him, it is a surprise to him. His perspective could be that when he was younger his mom would always pick up his clothes so he assumed that I would do that too. If I had just communicated with him that there would have been no yelling and fighting and he would have been more happy and willing to pick up his clothes. 

Some other things I learned this week that I found interesting is that if you have more people at your wedding, then you are more likely to stay together. And the more you spend on a wedding ring, the more likely you’ll split up. The average wedding today is $34,000. Most people, especially younger college students can’t afford it, so they end up taking out a loan, using credit cards, taking money from friends and family, or delaying marriage. This just makes it so much harder for their marriage in the future.  But this week I learned that you don’t have to have the most expensive, extravagant wedding ever. That’s not what it’s about. My teacher had $1000 for his wedding. But despite not having a ton of money, they still had 500 people come to their reception. This gives me so much comfort knowing that you don’t have to have a ton of money to have a super fun wedding. 

Another thing I learned this week is some 1 month and 1 year adjustments of newly weds. Some one month adjustments are budgeting, communicating, resolving conflict, talking about intimacy, and decision making. Some one year adjustments are managing time, household tasks/ roles, differences in culture, extended family connections, and talking about children. It's difficult getting married and learning how to adjust, but what I learned this week is that the most important thing is communicating and discussing things together. If you and your spouse have good communication skills then you get through anything together and your marriage will be supernatural (as my teacher likes to call it).