Mistakes to Avoid When You Get Married
So you’ve met the love of your life and you want to spend the rest of your life with them. But what do you need to know before you marry, and what mistakes and pitfalls might cause trouble further down the road?
While this post is designed for engaged couples, it can also provide some healthy tips for other committed relationships, whether you’ve been together for years already or you’re just entering the “long-term” phase of your dating relationship.
But you can’t ignore that marriage is a legal contract as well as a relationship, for better or for worse.
Without any further ado, let’s get into how you can dodge some of the potentially relationship-ending mistakes that can crop up, as well as how to cope with the fallout in a healthy way.
Share Your Goals and Expectations
One of the biggest dangers of a long-term relationship is disappointment. To be honest, disappointment is a fact of life. Things don’t always work out the way we’d hoped, planned, or expected. This isn’t meant to be depressing, most of the time we’re able to navigate the little disappointments and surprises of life (yes, sometimes things work out better than we’d hoped as well) and make do with what we’ve ended up with.
But what about in your relationship? Some disappointments and surprises can’t be avoided. Sudden illnesses or injuries, financial difficulties, and so on can’t be prevented. You can plan for them to an extent, such as by saving money for emergencies, but even then, you can’t expect and plan for everything.
However, some disappointments can be avoided by a simple conversation before you make any real commitments.
If you have a life plan or a picture of what you want for yourself and your relationship, you need to share that with your significant other, ideally sooner rather than later.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to talk about your hopes for your three future children named, Emily, Skye, and Jacob while also planning your picket fence and your two dogs Spot and Fido on the first date. Although some people have done this and found it to be helpful. But be upfront about the big things you want.
Do you want kids?
Do you want to live anywhere specific, such as near your family?
What are your major career plans?
If there are any huge incompatibility issues, such as one person wanting a family and the other having no intention of having children, you need to know. Otherwise, you both risk a life of disappointment and resentment. Either one person will get what they want and the other won’t, or neither will.
Yes, it is sometimes possible to compromise. But it’s also sometimes best to cut your losses, no matter how hard that is. Every couple is different, but everyone needs to have this conversation before any knots are tied.
Relationship Counseling
The chances are that you hear a lot of advice about relationships, especially if you are planning a wedding. Some of this advice is sound, some is based on myths and old wives’ tales and should probably be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.
But even if you’re sick of all of the advice, no matter how well-meaning it might be, you should still consider relationship counseling.
The problem with advice from people who know you is also its biggest strength. These people know you. They love you, they’ve seen your ups and downs, and they have ideas about the kind of person you are and the kind of person you should be with.
Your friends and family might take sides, especially if they only hear one side of the story. They might also have bad experiences with relationships, or very little experience other than what they’ve heard in passing.
However, a relationship counselor is unbiased and bases their advice on psychology. If they’re experienced, they’ve seen hundreds of couples before and can work out what works and what doesn’t.
While many people get counseling when their relationship or marriage is breaking down, a healthy way to look at relationship counseling is as a management strategy. Rather than trying to save a drowning relationship, wear a life jacket before you start having trouble.
The counselor will give you tools to work through whatever problems may crop up in the future, so you’re ready to face them.
The Hard Conversation – The Prenup
Finally, we’ll look at a more marriage-specific hurdle that can crop up. Before you get married, you need to discuss whether you will get a prenup. So, what is a prenup?
A prenup is a short-term for “prenuptial agreement”, so if you put it simply, it’s a legal agreement you make before you get married. While there are different types of prenups, they are mostly used to determine what happens in the event of a divorce.
This is why so many couples try to avoid this conversation. When you’re planning a wedding, you certainly don’t want to plan for the marriage to fail. But as we’ve said before, life is a hotbed of disappointment.
Some people think a prenup puts unnecessary strain on a relationship, perhaps because it shows a lack of trust in each other or the marriage itself. But a prenup can actually clear up a lot of genuine concerns that people have about marriage.
After all, it’s a legal agreement and you’re literally entangling your lives together. Things do, unfortunately, go wrong and some marriages break up. A prenup doesn’t guarantee that your marriage will end, it just protects both parties if it does.
This won’t be the only hard conversation that you will have to have in your life, and how you deal with the prenup can show you what your marriage will be like. Are you both fighting over who gets what or are you trying to keep things fair and equal for both parties?
It always pays to know in advance how you’ll deal with these problems and conversations.
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