5 Dates Every Engaged Couple Must Do Before the Big Day
You’re in love, you’re engaged, and you don’t want the butterflies you’ve had all this time to fly away. I mean who would? But sometimes, in the midst of wedding planning and preparing for marriage, you can forget to do the very thing that brought you to this relationship milestone: Date! And that’s what this blog is all about: dates every engaged couple needs to do before the big day!
You’ve probably heard it before and you will likely hear it again when you get married: date your spouse. The romance and wonder for each other doesn’t magically sustain itself; it needs fuel and your attention.
“Dating can be extremely beneficial toward keeping romance alive, and making a practice of going on regular dates can be a great way to jump-start that habit,” says Denise Limongello, a licensed psychotherapist based in Manhattan. In an article by The Knot, Limongello points out that lack of romance is a common reason for breakups or divorce.
If you want to make a habit of something, you have to go out of your way and make time for it. A habit you’ll want in your marriage is dating each other, so while you’re preparing for marriage let’s jump-start this habit!
Dates Every Engaged Couple Must Do Before the Big Day:
1. Try a restaurant you’ve never been to before.
It’s easy to get comfortable with doing the same things over and over. It’s great to have your favorite spots, but oftentimes just switching up the location to a place you’ve never been will prompt fresh conversation. When you get married, it can become tempting to fall into a routine and not challenge it. Routines are wonderful, don’t get me wrong. However, it can be problematic when your routine becomes “going through the motions.” When you don’t even have to think about doing or saying something, life can feel monotonous. A simple way to practice getting uncomfortable, if you will, is trying something new!
2. Couple’s Massage.
There’s a lot of stress when it comes to wedding planning. Everything seems faster paced, small decisions have bigger implications, family and friends ask questions you don’t know the answers to and let’s face it—that can cause tension. Maybe the tension is physical, or maybe it’s between you and your fiancé. Whether you book a couple’s massage (Groupon always has a deal going!) or set-up a spa-like shop at one of your places and give each other a massage, taking the time to decompress and slow down together can do you some good. Release the tension, rest and relax. Trust me—you need it.
3. Quality time date.
Engagement season: when suddenly everyone needs your attention or wants to be best friends again. No wonder it’s easy to get distracted. All of the planning and excitement seems to creep in to every conversation and fill your phone with notifications. On top of that, anyone else guilty of sitting beside your significant other (for a time longer than you care to admit) on your phones without having so much as a full conversation?
To keep this from happening, this date has two rules:
1. Turn the phones off and turn your attention toward each other, and 2. Don’t talk about wedding details.
What you do/how you spend this date is up to you. I suggest whatever it is, you give yourselves the opportunity for great conversation (so maybe not a movie night). You could picnic, make dinner together and set the table fancy, go on a hike or bike ride or to your favorite ice cream place. Whatever you decide, make your time together quality time.
4. Sing karaoke.
I know, I know. Not everyone’s cup of tea. BUT hear me out. You can do it in the comfort of your own home or if you’re feeling up to it, grace some strangers with your voice. The point of this date is to teach or remind you of some of the most important lessons that are essential to a happy marriage: Don’t take yourself too seriously, laugh at yourself and together …often. What better way to humble yourself than trying to reach a note Mariah Carrey invented?!
“There is growing evidence to suggest that one of the secrets to a long and happy relationship is to laugh together often,” according to an article by Conscious Rethink. There’s going to be some truly difficult times in your marriage and circumstances that will be out of your control. In those serious moments, if you haven’t practiced taking yourself less seriously when nothing hard was happening, it could be much more difficult to switch gears and be positive under pressure. So pick your favorite song and get to singing!
5. Plan a date night surprise.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of someone who intimately knows you choosing a curated experience for you both. The time it takes to think about what you want to do shows your fiancé they are worth your time, energy and effort. Then the date itself is a gift. It’s a win-win! You could set up a little fort in your living room with tea lights, favorite snacks and a movie queued up. You could blindfold them and drive to a destination—could be a historic site with a picnic packed if they’re a history buff, or maybe a drive-in movie and the back of your car is already equipped for ultimate coziness with blankets and pillows. Or perhaps you move the furniture out of the way and have a dance tutorial pulled up and a glass of wine poured.
You don’t need a birthday, anniversary, or holiday as a reason to surprise the love of your life. Loving them is reason enough. Taking this date into your marriage is a sure fire way to keep the romance aflame.
Dating before “I do” is a great way to prepare yourself for the lifelong pursuit of each other. Keep it interesting, try new things, carve out time to be solely with each other—even if it’s not much! You’ll thank yourselves for it later.
If you need help figuring out a creative date night, we have tons of free virtual and DIY date night ideas here!
Additional Blogs You May Like:
- Classic Date Nights with a Twist
- 10 Date Nights Every Couple Must Do Before Summer Ends
- Conversations Every Engaged Couple Should Have Before They Say, “I Do”
- 5 Things Every Engaged Couple Should Know
- Preparing for Marriage Online (If you’re in TN or GA, taking it gives you a $60 discount on your marriage license!)
Image from Pexels.com
5 Ways Preparing for Marriage Can Make Your Relationship Stronger
Your wedding day is approaching. You’re looking forward to all the benefits of a fun, stable, vibrant marriage: deep intimacy, unbreakable connection, and unconditional friendship. Taking the time to prepare for your marriage can help you mix all the ingredients necessary for a strong relationship and satisfying marriage. Here’s how – and why preparing for your marriage and make your relationship stronger!
Fewer surprises.
You’ve probably imagined what married life will be like. You think about what you’ll do for each other, the late-night talks, the early morning rendezvous. You have developed the “perfect” expectations of married life and of your soon-to-be spouse. But, there’s one problem—your future spouse wasn’t in on those conversations. They’ve only been formulating in your mind.
Talking honestly about your expectations helps you enter the marriage with eyes wide open. You may get an even better sense of the person you’ve fallen in love with. Do you uncover every single expectation in the process of preparation? No. You learn how to recognize expectations and become more attuned to verbalize them… which leads us to the second benefit.
Communication becomes a strength.
In high school, if I gave you a good study guide several days before you had to take the actual test, you’d have a better chance of doing really well on that test. It’s those students with no study guide who would be at a disadvantage. Part of preparing for marriage is getting the study guide, the keys to communication in marriage, prior to getting married. Preparing for marriage means putting yourself at the head of the class when it comes to communication and feeling good about being heard, understood, and valued.
Plan for transforming conflict into intimacy.
It’s not uncommon in marriage for one spouse to want to avoid conflict at all costs, while the other spouse thinks of it more like a sport, which can lead to some super awkward moments. For the prepared couple, learning to dance together through conflict can be the springboard to unbridled and passionate intimacy. There will be disagreements. How can this make your relationship stronger? Disagreements and conflict are often the prerequisite for increased intimacy, unbreakable connection, and a fierce security.
Gain clarity on some of marriage’s biggest topics.
Money, in-laws, parenting, intimacy. What to do with her bonus check? Letting his mom know you’re not visiting for Sunday dinner. If and when do we want to have kids? What makes each of you feel most intimate with one another? These are all topics that can bring joy to the marriage if you can get out in front of them as a couple. Receiving advice and guidance on dealing with key topics prior to marriage can help you be on the same page and eliminate unnecessary surprises.
Gives you a better chance of a stable, satisfying, lengthy marriage.
Everyone who gets married wants a stable, satisfying, lengthy marriage. In preparing for life after the wedding, you’re actually doing something about it. Research found that relationship satisfaction and success is more about each person’s perception of the relationship and less about choosing the “perfect” person for you. Intentionally preparing for your marriage can improve how the two of you perceive and interact with one another. As a result, you are giving yourself a better chance of a committed and fulfilling relationship.
Preparing for your marriage can make your relationship stronger, and it can take many forms: premarital education and premarital counseling are the most direct and intentional methods. You’ll discuss each of the topics mentioned in the most effective settings. Research from Scott Stanley and others has shown that couples who receive premarital preparation are less likely to divorce. In addition, inviting healthy, married couples for coffee and dessert to pick their brains on how to have a strong relationship can be invaluable as you prepare for your big day. Preparing for your marriage will not only give you a head start to a thriving marriage, just as importantly, it will also strengthen your relationship in the process. A strong relationship is just the ingredient you need for a thriving marriage.
Image from Unsplash.com
Is marriage on your mind for your future? If it is, it doesn’t make a difference whether you’re a single searching for that special someone, in an “endgame” relationship, or perhaps already engaged when it comes to preparing yourself for marriage. If you know in your heart of hearts that you want marriage to be a part of your future, you don’t have to wait to prepare yourself for it. In fact, taking the time to prepare yourself for marriage now will save you from yourself later. (Take it from someone who’s married now and was grateful for getting this advice sooner than later.)
How to Prepare Yourself for Marriage
Make sure you’re meeting the expectations you desire for your future spouse.
If you want your spouse to have a stable job, work on getting one for yourself. If you want them to be good at listening and to understand when conflict arises, be that also. People can’t meet expectations they don’t know are there and in that vein, you shouldn’t expect something from someone else that you don’t expect from yourself. If you can decide what your standards are and choose to meet them first, you won’t have any reservations for wanting those in someone else.
Love yourself and improve yourself.
You cannot give what you don’t have. If you don’t love yourself, loving someone else wholeheartedly will be a challenge. If you second guess how much they love you because of an insecurity you’re facing, you risk projecting a problem onto your significant other that isn’t really there. Those feelings can hurt both people. Of course, someone can help you feel more loved, but ultimately, your expectation for a relationship shouldn’t be to solve your struggles. Having someone join the journey you’ve already started means you’re at a place to explain what you’ve been working through and giving them an opportunity to understand.
When you love yourself, you’ll find productive ways to challenge yourself and promote growth and healing. You want the best version of someone else to partner up with so offer up the same! Now listen closely to this part: It doesn’t mean being the best; it means giving your best effort. That looks like choosing to put time, energy and effort into what’s important to you in your life and learning to be happy on your own so you can share that happiness with someone else. You and your partner will fall short and are incapable of being each other’s only source of happiness. Imagine the pressure you’d feel from that! You two will undoubtedly make each other happy if you’re in a healthy relationship, but you will rest easy in the fact you don’t have to be the only source.
Work through your past and move toward healing.
This one is an ongoing process. There’s a multitude of emotions and circumstances that come with healing. If you’ve been through something traumatic, it could affect your day-to-day experiences and interpretations of what other people do and their motivations, including a significant other.
Starting the process now rather than when you have another person to consider can be so liberating. As you work through your challenges or baggage, you can discover tendencies you have that may be a side effect of what you’ve been through. Naming your hurt reclaims power over it. I’m not saying you have to have it all figured out and all of the mess you may bring to a relationship perfectly tidied. However, acknowledging the hurt you may have been through now and doing something about it is great for your mental health and in turn, your well-being. A counselor or therapist is most qualified and depending on your experiences, maybe your best option. But, if you know there is just some baggage you need to talk about to process it, call up a trusted friend and let them know what you need.
Be adaptable.
Marriage is a beautiful gift, but sometimes the price is compromise or sacrifice. When you’re committed to loving someone and doing life with them for the rest of both of your lives, your dreams, goals and future plans have to go through a WE instead of ME filter. You two will be a team—win together and lose together. Find a communication style that works best for you both and go out of your way to make them feel loved. (You may have different love languages, so sometimes it doesn’t feel as natural to do what your future partner needs.)
The compromises and sacrifices can be as small as sacrificing plans with an old friend when it’s the only night available for date night, waking up early to help each other in the mornings, sharing the spotlight at family gatherings, and the list could go on. Or as big as moving for their job, paying off debt before a down payment on a house, waiting to have kids, etc. In circumstances big and small, being married dictates being flexible or at least being willing to try.
Preparing yourself for marriage is really a journey of self-awareness—understanding the motivations behind your actions, the words you say, how you carry yourself, and how you treat others. It is monumental and can make the world of difference in a relationship and ultimately one day, your marriage.
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5 Signs You Should Break Off Your Engagement
It’s normal to get nervous about important decisions. Asking yourself, “Am I marrying the right person?” is one of those nervy decisions because marriage is a lifelong commitment, not something that will come out easily in the wash if you’ve not made the right choice. So you weigh the odds, make a list of pros and cons, mull over some what-ifs. But at some point, when the doubt overshadows the confidence in the relationship, you may find yourself asking a new question: “Should I break off my engagement?”
Here are 5 signs the answer to that question may be “yes.”
1. Isolation from family or friends.
If your fiancé is keeping you from seeing or talking to your friends and family for reasons that don’t have your best interest in mind, then consider breaking it off. When you marry, you become a unit, but within that, it’s essential to have a community of people you can lean on when life gets challenging. It’s impossible to be everything you need for each other. Putting that kind of expectation on each other can be crippling. Though you may go to each other first, it doesn’t mean they will always be the last person you talk to in order to work something out.
When you marry someone, you very much so marry the family as well. Unless it is a personal boundary you have set for yourself concerning the lack of communication with your family, having your fiancé control who you see and when can take a manipulative turn.
2. Can’t compromise on “big-ticket” items.
If the two of you find yourselves at a crossroads, and you can’t find a solution for issues that affect both of your futures, reconsidering your engagement may be in your path.
For example:
- If one of you wants to have/adopt kids and the other wants nothing to do with kids EVER.
- If you can’t agree on how you will handle money or you have significant financial differences of opinion.
- You can’t find a middle ground for religious differences or the role your spirituality plays in your life. (Flash forward to if you have kids, what religious influences can you agree on to raise them?)
- One of your careers is treated as more important than your relationship. Waiting to marry until you are in a financially stable career is one thing. But a perspective where marriage is going to get in the way of career goals, set them back, or get in the way of what they want to do is another thing.
3. Marrying because you’ve been together forever and it’s just the logical next step.
If you’re only getting married because you don’t feel like starting over with someone else or don’t want to be lonely—a lifelong commitment with someone isn’t a way to fix that. Being married to someone you feel like you “settled for” isn’t going to lead to a happy or fulfilled life. You could quickly begin to resent them or live with regret.
If it’s been forever because you two were working toward being in the right place for your relationship and you can’t imagine life without each other, that is entirely different.
4. It’s just not a healthy relationship.
- Lack of trust in each other.
- A pattern of cheating and making up.
- Lies and deceptive behavior.
- Addiction issues.
- Extreme jealousy—they care obsessively who you hang out with, what you wear, what you talk about, and how you spend your downtime.
- You continually make excuses for their behavior.
- Your fiancé gaslights you and makes any problem that arises your fault.
5. Your fiancé is abusive.
Healthy relationships revolve around mutual respect, trust, and consideration for the other person. Intense jealousy and controlling behavior, which could include physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, are all indicative of an unhealthy relationship.
Some signs of abuse to look out for:
Fiancé says:
- Violence is your fault.
- If you had not done… Then I would not have had to do…
- You cannot survive without them.
- You are too stupid, too ugly, or too unfit to be a good employee, wife, husband, friend, or mother, father. (They always put you down and make you feel bad about yourself.)
If you find yourself in this type of relationship, ask someone you trust to help you safely get out of harm’s way. The National Domestic Violence hotline is 1-800-799-7233, and there are often resources available to help victims of domestic violence in your community. *You are not alone, and treating others well is key to a healthy relationship. We sincerely hope for the best for you.
Though breaking off an engagement can leave you with some initial heartache…
…choosing not to marry someone because they aren’t compatible or the relationship is unhealthy will leave you better equipped for a more fulfilling future. Marriage is a lifelong commitment. Taking the time to consider if it’s the next step for you thoroughly and for your relationship is an essential part of deciding what’s best for you.
Additional Resources:
- Conversations Every Engaged Couple Should Have Before They Say, “I Do”
- How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk or Jerkette
- Are You a Keeper?
- How Long Should A Couple Be Engaged Before Getting Married?
- 8 Must-Have Conversations for Couples
Image from Unsplash.com
What I’ve Learned During My First Year of Marriage
The morning light playfully casts its shadows on my husband’s face. I ask myself, once again, in my half slumber, if this is really my life. My mornings are filled with “I love you’s” and kisses (morning breath and all) and an alarm set purposely to snooze so we can cozy up to each other before the real world starts knocking. I never pictured something so imperfect feeling so perfect. Our marriage has its flaws like any other relationship, but we’ve used them as reminders of our humanity and mile markers of where we can grow.
This first year of marriage has been a beautiful mess.
Filled with chaos calmed by Tyler’s deep voice and aptitude to forgive and apologize without hesitation, but also with humility. This has been a year of learning to do old things a new way, learning to let go and let loose, and learning even more so, how to love with reckless abandon. How to love unconditionally even through some harsh conditions. We weathered the storm of my losing a parent and we also learned to be okay with not being able to be everything the other person needs. I needed my husband through that tragedy, but I also needed my best friends and my sisters to help me process what happened in a different way.
This dreamy relationship of ours isn’t clouded by rose-colored glasses. We are very aware of the gift of newness and the romance it inspires and of the brokenness and falling short we have already done and will continue to do. It’s all a part of it. We have said things that hurt each other. We’ve stayed up late searching for resolutions to issues that we could have prevented if we had communicated our expectations sooner.
If I’ve learned anything in my first year of marriage, it’s that marriage itself is a state of becoming.
It’s active, not passive. Our relationship as spouses doesn’t get the luxury of the title “Married” solving our problems, having the hard conversations magically disappear, or the sense of accomplishment you feel when you reach a finish line. Marriage is a state of becoming. Becoming closer, more honest (and more tactful), more humble, more loving, more forgiving, more adaptable, and more intentional.
Our wedding day was the beginning of a public commitment, but we spent almost seven years curating and pruning the best parts of ourselves while revealing our weaknesses. Tyler’s way better at apologizing than I am and I’m better at communicating my feelings on a whim. We get to hold each other accountable – and if we don’t, we miss the potential for our relationship to flourish. It can be tempting to assume you know what your spouse is thinking and feeling on the basis of you knowing them better than anyone else knows them. If we live in a state of assumptions, we miss the chance to get to know each other more intimately.
We aren’t off the hook now that we have some pretty circles around our fingers.
If anything, it has never been more important to press in and run from the idea of getting comfortable. Your lifelong commitment is an active one. It’s not an “I do” to say I already did.
I’ve learned marriage is a pursuit. Though we may be within a few walls, we still need to go out of our way for each other like we did when we had opposite schedules or were long-distance. For us, that may look like sacrificing a night out with a friend if it’s the only night he and I could spend quality time together. Being married means considering each other first; plans don’t just affect you anymore – they affect both of you.
As humans, we are constantly changing, balancing on a tightrope of circumstances in flux – some we don’t have any control over (pandemic anyone?). I don’t fear the tightrope or my lack of balance sometimes because I know my spouse is my safety net. Tyler is there to catch me when I fall – and wants to be there to catch me. In this state of becoming, we both are challenged to pursue each other. It looks like keeping our conversations real and curious, flirting just because, and being quick to admit when we’re wrong.
Takeaways:
- Marriage is a daily, active commitment to each other.
- You have to pursue each other to have a worthwhile marriage.
- Acknowledging you and your spouse’s humanity helps set realistic expectations.
Questions to ask each other:
- How can we continue pursuing each other? What does that look like for us? (i.e., writing each other notes, texting each other during the day just because, planning a weekly date night, etc.)
- Talk about each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how you can be a team.
- Do we have a plan to handle conflict/hard situations? If so, revisit it. If not, come up with one.
Bonus blogs to help you prepare for your first year of marriage:
How Long Should A Couple Be Engaged Before Getting Married?
How long should a couple be engaged before getting married? Great question! There isn’t a “magic number” and it doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing. What matters is how well you both really know each other and if you are both ready—individually and relationally—for that big “forever” next step.
To help guide you through this thought process, let’s see what some experts have to say and what conclusions they’ve gathered from research.
The average engagement length for U.S. couples was 15 months. The study represents feedback from more than 25,000 couples married in 2019.
Different factors can play into having a longer or shorter engagement. It boils down to what is best for you two. It’s important to know the difference between having a reason for a long engagement or one of you not wanting to commit and pick a wedding date.
Reasons for having longer engagement:
- Are you still in school?
- Are you long-distance or living abroad?
- Do you have commitments that are presently keeping you busy and you need time to plan?
- Are you saving money for the wedding to pay for it upfront?
- Most importantly, are you still getting to know each other?
John Van Epp, author and relationship expert, believes that within “three to six months you can begin to know someone, but like looking through a microscope at its lowest power, you can only see certain things in that amount of time.”
Dating someone for an extended period allows you to see certain things that may not become evident right away. Having history together provides understanding into who each person really is. It allows you to see how each person handles different kinds of situations. So, you may not need a long engagement if you’ve already put in the relationship work to get to know each other well. The important thing is that you are ready for marriage.
“A relationship needs time for things to normalize. Many people are very flexible in the infancy of a relationship, but as time goes by they become less flexible. By taking things slow and easy you give your relationship time to grow up and you get to see how the person will really treat you,” says relationship expert, Julie Baumgardner.
One study found that couples who dated for more than two years consistently scored higher on marital satisfaction than those who dated less than two years.
According to research by John Birtchnell and John Kennard, at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, “Couples which are better acquainted before marriage have significantly higher rates of marital quality.” Couples who are less acquainted experience greater problems when they face the inevitable difficulties of marriage.
“Long engagements are helpful when individuals are at significantly different places in their lives,” says Scott Haltzman, author and relationship expert. So, if you or your partner are in the midst of some of those things listed above, it might be better to take some time on the front end to sort it out before the wedding. It also allows time for premarital education.
Haltzman also says that a prolonged engagement gives couples an opportunity to engage in premarital education to learn skills to help them navigate the marriage journey. Premarital education is incredibly important—no matter how long you‘re engaged.
In addition, Scott Stanley, a marriage guru and research professor at the University of Denver Center for Marital and Family Studies, argues that one of the primary reasons premarital education has value is because it slows couples down and fosters greater deliberation. In Making a Case for Premarital Education, Stanley says the lack of time in a premarital relationship correlates with higher rates of divorce in the subsequent marriage.
However, there is a growing love for shorter engagements.
Remember, it doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing. Maybe you’ve dated a really long time and gone through premarital education. Perhaps you’ve seen each other respond to problems, differences, and stressors over time. If so, you might not need a long engagement.
Being engaged feels separate from dating because of the mutual desire for commitment for the future. But there is some overlap in this limbo. You aren’t married yet and you’re more than a girlfriend/boyfriend. Nonetheless, you’re still dating and your goal is to continue getting to know each other so there aren’t any big surprises after you marry.
It boils down to figuring out what is best for you both based on where your relationship is right now. Have you laid a strong foundation? Are you rushing things? Are you listening to other people’s opinions versus making a decision that is right for the two of you?
It’s a case-by-case basis, so don’t feel like you have to find a perfect equation. Figure out what works for you.
Consider these blogs for some additional resources:
We’re Getting Married And Everyone Is Giving Us Advice
“I just want to do it right, I want to know what I’m supposed to do.” I kept saying this to myself while I was getting ready to be married. Plus, I wanted to prepare myself for anything that could come our way. I wanted a rock solid marriage with a foundation no earthquake could tear down. But when everyone started giving us advice, it was overwhelming.
My parents divorced and my amazing mom raised my sisters and me by herself. She taught me unconditional love with her selfless giving and consistent encouragement, but I wasn’t around a marriage relationship.
Luckily, the tantalizing lie that I would mess up or something would go wrong was put to bed once Tyler, my husband, and I took inventory of the relationships we admire.
His parents’ marriage was stronger than ever, a close family friend had been married for almost 50 years, a couple who were our small group leaders, and the list went on. Tyler and I were surrounded by people who loved us and would jump at the opportunity to support us.
☆ There are people in your life with good intentions who will give you lots of marriage advice before and right after you say “I do.” However, there are some people who might not necessarily be the right ones to speak into your marriage. Or it might be better to say that they may not be qualified to give you that kind of advice.
How can you decipher what marriage advice is solid, who to listen to, and who’s a friend of your marriage?
Checklist:
- Do you or your fiancé have a good relationship with the person giving advice?
- Is this someone who you trust?
- Did this person/couple know you and/or your fiancé before the engagement?
- Is this a person who is where you want to be at in life?
- Do you like how they handle conflict?
- Have they already been through what you’re going through?
- Are they supportive of your marriage?
- Will the relationship with them continue in your marriage and not just before it?
There’s no better place to seek marriage advice than from someone who is in the place you want to be. Most people will give advice from the baggage they have had to carry and what they’ve already been through. There is wisdom in asking questions, and pure gold from listening to those who have done marriage well who know you well enough to be open and honest about their experience. Talk to couples who did not let trials cripple their relationship but used the challenge as an opportunity to grow from it.
Ask them questions like…
- What is the most challenging and most rewarding part of marriage?
- What did you all do that has helped you get to the place you are now?
- How do you solve problems that seem irreconcilable?
- What would you have done differently with the experiences you have been through?
- What grace do you wish you had given each other in the beginning of your marriage?
☆ There’s always room to grow – more in love, closer together, and into stronger versions of yourself. Lean into the support system you have and keep the door open for conversations throughout your marriage.
In addition to talking with your trusted people, here are some resources…
- Conversations Every Engaged Couple Should Have Before They Say, “I Do”
- 3 Things I Wish I Had Done Differently While I Was Engaged
- 5 Things Every Engaged Couple Should Know
- Engaged Couples and Expectations
☆ If you want to take it a step further, check out our online premarital program!
P.S. There are a few other organizations we have found helpful, like The Gottman Institute, LoveThinks, and the work by Michele Weiner-Davis to name a few. Hope this helps. <3
Conversations Every Engaged Couple Should Have Before They Say, “I Do”
While you’re engaged, conversations tend to hover endlessly around the wedding day, and naturally so. Though working out the details and planning your celebration is exciting, having conversations about other topics is important, too.
You and your fiancé are stepping into something beautiful—a promise of commitment, a proclamation of loving each other now and falling in love over and over again, a 24/7 best friend, and a person who wants to love you at your best and through the worst. You owe it to each other to take the time to appreciate what you have and to continue the pursuit.
One way to pursue each other is to sit down and have important conversations. Continue to learn about each other, find a middle ground for things you may not have the same opinion on, and keep the door open to come back to these conversations down the road. As time goes by, things can change, and so can you.
5 Conversations Every Engaged Couple Should Have Before They Say, “I Do”
1. Talk about the importance of marriage, what it means to you both and what you hope for it to look like.
Being on the same page about why marriage is important to you helps you both take ownership of your relationship and establishes its value. When you take the time to lay out your hopes and expectations, you invite your spouse into the opportunity to make those happen. If you don’t voice what you expect from your future spouse, you’ll set them up for failure and yourself up for disappointment.
2. Do you want children?
If one of you does and the other doesn’t, this could be quite an obstacle to get over. It is important not to assume the other’s answer in this particular conversation because it intimately affects what the future looks like. Talking about this as an engaged couple is a really big deal.
3. How do you handle conflict and what rules do you want to establish on how to fight when you do?
Conflict is inescapable for any relationship, says Psychologist Dan Wile, but some of the best news is that conflict handled well actually brings you closer instead of pulling you apart. You have to find what works best for you both. For my husband and I, we have two ground rules: 1. No yelling and 2. No cussing at each other. This works for us! If we feel like we are going to start yelling, we call timeout and revisit the conversation after we have had time to process.
With more than 40 years of love and relationship research under their belt, The Gottman Institute says that whether love will last is more about how couples address their differences and support one another’s needs and dreams. Here are some steps they suggest to handle conflict better.
4. Talk through your finances.
What are your financial goals? Have you talked about a budget and about savings? This topic can take a turn for the worst pretty quickly if you don’t find a middle ground. Here’s some guidance on automating money in your marriage and saving thousands by The Gottman Institute.
5. Intimacy in your relationship.
It’s an often underrated conversation. Being intimate isn’t limited to being physical, though that is an important part. In fact, there’s emotional and spiritual intimacy, too. Each of these plays into each other and helps create a deeper bond with your partner because you are learning about them in a way that others may never experience. Spending quality time together is a great way to increase intimacy. Talk about what your dreams are, your spirituality, your feelings and what’s on your heart as well.
Get personal with your sweetheart. Start out your marriage with the muscle memory of talking through tough conversations, how you want to love each other and what’s important to you. The more you communicate, the richer the potential for a lovely life together. Now who’s ready to say I do?
Check out some other great blogs for engaged couples:
