When you marry, you and your spouse will experience a momentous head-on collision if you expect to continue life as you now know it in your marriage. Each of you will need to do some housecleaning and abandon your world as you know it now, so you can forma new life and a new culture. Most of us aren’t expecting that drastic a transition. But you’re not marrying a clone who thinks, acts, and does things just like you. So who gives in, changes, and adapts? Which way is best? You’ll have to discover that together. It’s so much easier to confront as many of these issues as possible before you marry, rather than be devastated and disillusioned by them after the wedding. As one man said, “Marriage is not a 50–50 proposition. It’s more like a 90–10 relationship. Sometimes you give 90, and sometimes you get 90. But don’t keep score.”
Getting married will change your dating relationship. All of the conscious and unconscious expectations you brought with you will now be tested, and some will be found wanting. The marriage itself acts as a trigger to unleash the underlying hopes, fears, needs, and desires that have been lying dormant for years, awaiting the time they could be exposed.
If you question whether or not getting married brings about significant changes, think about this. In a major national survey of what happened during the first year of marriage, 50 to 60 percent of newlyweds (and half of them had lived together prior to marriage) reported:
¶The number of arguments they had changed after they were married.
¶Their tendency to be critical of one another changed (most were more critical).
¶Their feelings of self-confidence changed.
¶Their relationship with their own family changed.
¶Their attitude toward their work changed.
¶Their interest in having an attractive home changed.
In addition, between 40 and 50 percent said they had occasional doubts whether their marriage would last, had significant marital problems, and reported discovering that being married was harder than they ever thought it would be.
This same survey found a disturbing and sobering fact that could be very beneficial for those planning to marry. There were as many regrets about the first year of marriage as people who have been married. Almost everyone wished they had done something differently. The most frequently mentioned factor concerned developing goals and specifying their needs before marriage. They wished they had assumed more responsibility for the success of the relationship.
Of those in this survey who divorced, all of them said the problems began at the beginning of their marriage, but many denied or ignored the problems until it was too late.
Sounds overwhelming and almost impossible, doesn’t it?
Well, on your own it is. I don’t know how couples ever work it out without learning to submit to God. I remember in Claire Cloninger's book When she said, "when the Glass Slipper Doesn’t Fit and the Silver Spoon Is in Someone Else’s Mouth, described the miracle of marriage extremely well:
I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in downtown Manhattan. I am of the opinion that only God Himself can make a marriage happen really well. And when He does it His way, it’s one of His very best miracles. I mean, the Red Sea was good, but for my money this is better. What God can create out of…two surrendered lives is “infinitely more than we ever dare to ask or imagine.”
Through Him we can discover how to experience His grace in our marriage. Along with the abandonment of your single lifestyle is the need to abandon yourself to His will and His strength as you proceed through your marriage. There may be days in which no matter how well you prepared for your marriage you may stop and say, “This isn’t exactly what I expected. Was this the best decision for me? I thought so at that time.” When this happens, that’s where the depth of realistic love (which is discussed in a later chapter) and commitment will have to sustain your marriage.
In a book of essays on marriage, Mike Mason wrote, “Marriage involves a continuous daily renewal of a decision which, since it is of such a staggering order as to be humanly impossible to make, can only be made through the grace of God.”
I hope you have been informed!
