10 Dating Relationship Advice and Tips Before Marriage
Most people, especially women, are so excited about getting married, having an unforgettable wedding, wearing the most expensive wedding dress, and being regarded as someone’s wife that they forget critical marriage lessons that will make them model wives.
These lessons help build a firm foundation for your marriage, ensuring that the two of you begin the journey with the right perspective. If you’re about to make this lifetime commitment, here are the top 10 dating relationship advice and tips before marriage to help you succeed.
Critical Dating Tips for Couples Planning to Get Married
Even with all the excitement about your upcoming wedding, it’s important to take a moment to reflect on the whole idea of marriage and how much you know about it. These tips should provoke your thoughts and give you the right mindset before you say, “I do.”
1. Why Is Marriage Important to You?
People get married for all kinds of reasons. Some are lonely and crave companionship, while others believe that being married is a badge of honor. Societal pressure is another common reason why people want to settle down and have kids.
Regardless of your reasons, don’t get into marriage thinking that it’s all about your contentment, self-aggrandizement, and having all your needs fulfilled by your partner. Dating and marriage are about finding your soulmate with whom you can enjoy life together and help each other grow.
2. Marriage Requires Mutual Commitment
It’s about committing to each other fully and working together through pain and joy. Getting married because you hope your spouse will make you happy and meet all your physical and emotional needs is selfish and a recipe for a disastrous marriage. So, have a candid discussion with your spouse about why both of you need to be committed to the relationship.
3. Establish Shared Goals for Your Marriage
It helps to know that you’re both working towards the same goals. Everything else flows smoothly when you’ve established the direction you want your marriage to go and the goals you hope to achieve.
4. Understand That Nobody Is Perfect
Don’t get into marriage believing that your spouse won’t disappoint you. Both of you are going to upset each other quite often, especially when the infatuation dies down, and you begin to see each other’s true colors.
5. Know Your Partner
Unfortunately, many couples try very hard to hide their true characters during courtship. So, it’s difficult to know who your partner truly is until after they settle in together. However, try your best to study your partner and have many candid discussions with them about their plans and expectations.
6. Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst
Expecting your spouse not to change after marriage is being naïve, and it might end up destroying the relationship. Your mindset should be to hope for the best while expecting the worst.
7. Be Willing to Adjust
Understand that both of you are selfish human beings with needs and desires that must be continually adjusted to suit your current situation. Many couples don’t realize this during their happy and blurry days of dating. It hits them hard right after getting married.
8. Establish Conflict-Resolution Methods Early
It’s almost inevitable that you’ll get hurt by your spouse numerous times in the course of your marriage. The love of your life is likely the one who will hurt you the most. Therefore, it’s important to establish a workable conflict-resolution mechanism at the dating stages of your relationship so that it becomes easier to resolve issues when you’re married.
9. Be Willing to Work Things Out
Some people use silent treatment, withheld intimacy, or physical and emotional abuse when they’re upset with their spouses. These methods don’t solve anything; instead, they exacerbate the problem, increasing resentment and the risk of separation.
But the beauty of it is that both of you should be able to work through the hurt and disappointment to build an unbreakable bond.
10. It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better
This isn’t meant to scare you or dissuade you, but it’s a fact of life in marriage that every couple planning to get married should be aware of. But things get better over time, especially when you have an effective way of dealing with disappointments in your marriage.
Let these lessons be your guiding principles when dating or getting into marriage. You’ll avoid a lot of mishaps that many newlyweds struggle with.
