What Do You Wish You’d Known When You Got Married
October 24th, 2023 by G.
A young person of my acquaintance, who may or may not be headed in the marriage direction, asked me what things I wish I’d known before marriage. Interesting question. Tough question. Here is what I came up with.
- Physical health influences mental health and marriage quality a lot.
- The manhood, womanhood thing. Each man and each woman is unique, so it is impossible to have a fully detailed roadmap, but there are general trends. I wish I had known more about the general trends. For instance, it wasn’t until shockingly recently that I really internalized that my wife likes my physical strength. This is pretty typical for a woman. I assume that it feels good to know that the guy who is supposed to bring protection to the table in your marriage appears to be more capable of it than you. I wish I’d known this earlier.
- A marriage can get into really awful hopeless times, perhaps even thinking it will never get better, but still rebounding to peaks of happiness.
- Its possible to have a great marriage, just perpetually awesome. I read about those couples like, I think, the Hinckleys, who never went to bed mad and figured that was just swank. Impossible. I really did believe it was impossible. Now I don’t. It would have been impossible for my marriage, because my marriage had me in it and I had some growing to do, but I think its possible for most people. The average person is capable of reaching much greater heights than they know, if only they set their sights high enough.
- Don’t want until a problem or a fight is resolved to resume loving on each other.
My wife adds
6. Your spouse is crazy insecure. Everyone is. Much reassurance needed.
I don’t think this advice is for everyone. For some people, maybe the opposite of what I’m saying may be what they need. But this is what I wish *I* had known before marriage.
What about you?
Pirate Captain
October 24, 2023
1. Get to know the future in-laws well. They are going to seriously impact your marriage (in my case, I did not get to know them at all before marriage, and my first marriage ended because they were, frankly, evil people intent on destroying their children’s happiness at all costs; with the second marriage, which has so far lasted much longer than the first, while the in-laws are not great people, they are also quite hands off with their kids, which was nice to know going in)
2. It’s hard. Damn hard. But while the lows can get very, very low, the highs are amazing and so much better than the lows. There really is no “balance” here; the highs are more than worth the lows.
3. Figure out the spouse’s love language (see: The 5 Love Languages). My wife’s is “quality time.” We struggled a lot until we figured that one out (often, your spouse isn’t even sure what his/her love language is; they may say it’s one thing, but pay attention to what they actually react to).
4. With my wife, anyway, going to bed mad is sometimes the best choice, because she tends to “sleep it off” and be totally over it in the morning. Trying to resolve something before bed often just makes her angrier. Everyone is different.
Zen
October 24, 2023
Let me support Pirate Captain’s #1.
You do marry the family. Maybe you marry your spouse in spite of that, but don’t think it will not be greatly significant.
And all the rest, I agree with.
Yes, sometimes letting her sleep it off is the only real possibility. And that is just what she needs. Yes, learn your spouse’s love language, and even more than that, how to best love them.
And yes, it does take two and that relationship takes work. There are a lot of people out there without relationship skills. You can’t force a relationship or make choices for other people.
Rozy
October 25, 2023
I wish I’d known how important it is to be on the same page financially. That has been a thorn in my side for the whole 35 years. I wish I’d known how to encourage healthy habits right from the start. Bad health because of lifestyle choices really limits activity in later years. I wish I’d known that the patterns you form when first married and when you’re first parents are the patterns (and habits) that will be with you for the rest of your marriage. It’s really hard to change those after you figure out that that wasn’t what you wanted.
I agree with Pirate Captain about sleeping things off; daylight and time off bring a different and often better perspective. Tiredness at the end of the day can make negotiating a difference of opinion stressful.
G.
October 26, 2023
“sleeping things off” — agreed.
To be more clear, I wish I had known that it was possible to go to bed not mad even if the problem hadn’t been addressed yet
Wesley Dean
October 29, 2023
Everything in the book Power and Covenants: Men, Women, and Priesthood by R. Scott Strong and David B. Goates.
bobdaduck
November 4, 2023
I used to have a lot of thoughts on this which I have forgotten at the moment, but I have been extremely surprised by the power of couples prayer. Seems to be anywhere between 25x-50x more powerful than single prayer. I wasn’t expecting that, nobody told me.