So it is in dating. Of course, we want to be our best self in courtship. But if you are going to take that next step and make a life-long commitment to a person, you want to make sure you know the real person.

That’s one reason long engagements are better than shorter ones. You have more time, and more opportunities to see each other at your best and at your worst. Good days and bad days. Happy moods and unhappy ones.

Doing courses like this one can help too. Even couples who feel they know each other very well tell me they discover things about each other they didn’t know.

When you marry, you won’t know everything about your mate. That would make marriage pretty boring! It’s a life-long growing process. But you do want to minimize the unpleasant surprises. You don’t want to feel like you’ve been duped by false advertising.

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But what comes naturally often isn’t the best.

Anger is a natural human emotion. Sometimes it’s justifiable, other times it’s a response of selfishness. It can be a complex matter, and too much to discuss here. It can become destructive to a relationship, and that’s why it should be dealt with appropriately. This is one of those area where it could be good to find a minister or licensed therapist and “sit down” to spend some time talking about any anger in your relationship and how you manage it.

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“Yes,” said the old man.

A few minutes went by and the old man noticed that his young companion was staring at the roses. “Do you have a girlfriend?” the old man asked.  “I do,” said the young man. “I’m going to see her right now, and I’m going to give her this Valentine’s Day card.”

They rode in silence for another 10 minutes, and then the old man got up to get off the bus. As he stepped out into the aisle, he suddenly placed the roses on the young man’s
lap and said, “I think my wife would want you to have these.  I’ll tell her that I gave them to you.”

He left the bus quickly. As the bus pulled away, the young man turned to see the old man enter the gates of a cemetery.

Unknown

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But if we view marriage primarily as something you have to “work at,” we may actually miss what a good marriage is.

It’s nice to stumble across someone who agrees with you when you are going against the grain of conventional wisdom.  So here’s a quote from Willard Harley, author of the best selling books Love Busters and His Needs, Her Needs.  Read it together and see what you think.

Good marriages are not hard work. In fact they seem to chug along quite nicely with very little thought. It’s bad marriages that are hard work. Good marriages become bad marriages when mistakes are made that ruin the romantic love spouses once had for each other. These mistakes fall into two categories: (1) failing to meet each other’s emotional needs or (2) making each other unhappy (love busters). I cover the mistakes of the first type in my book His Needs, Her Needs, and mistakes of the second type in Love Busters. Either type of mistake can destroy romantic love, and it’s always much harder to be married to someone you no longer love. But if you meet those unmet needs, and stop hurting each other, even if it feels unnatural and awkward to you, love is eventually restored, and then being married is easy again.

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Part One

Part Two

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People with EDD have trouble looking outside their own world to appreciate what other people experience. As you can imagine, that kills communication, creates conflicts, and ultimately leads to failure in relationships.

So the husband has had a touch day and just wants to come home and relax. But he may not want to hear that his wife has had an equally difficult day, just in other ways. Or because she is so focused on her problems, she is unable (or unwilling) to try to enter his world to appreciate what he has to deal with all day.

EDD is essentially self-absorption. It can come about as a result of habitual practice. It can be overcome through retraining. That is, learning to look beyond oneself and trying to enter another’s person’s world.

Many of the exercises in my marriage preparation course are designed to help couples learn about each other’s lives, problems, experiences, etc.

Here are a couple to get you started:

Two-Way Learning

Try On a New Pair of Shoes

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I completely understand a couple’s desire to save money on their wedding.

But of course, I’d like to see more couples as eager (and crazy) about saving their marriage. You may think that’s only for married couples who’ve run into trouble. But it really starts before the wedding. I like the book title I saw: Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts!

That is where it begins. So spend as much time as you can before your marriage, preparing for a successful marriage. And if you decide to have a toilet paper wedding dress, you won’t have to save the toilet paper for your tears.

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There are a lot of directions you can take that discussion. Here’s one: I co-officiated a wedding last weekend, and the other minister made this observation: In marriage, there is an evolving relationship between feelings and action. Early on, feelings (of love) lead to action. As the marriage goes along, often the actions are what create the feelings (of love). What do you think?

Enjoy the movie and your discussion. There are two parts, each about 7 minutes long.
Part One



Part Two

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