Cold Feet or Call it Off

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Read Time: 5 minutes

What if I’m having doubts about getting married?

The engagement period is marked by several emotional highs: the thrill of announcements, anxiety about mounting costs, and the mad dash to get everything done. Couples will ride the roller coaster of those highs and lows all the way to the altar and even through the honeymoon.

During this time, it’s totally normal to experience conflict with your partner and even have some doubts about marriage. But how do you know whether your doubts are a normal part of making one of the biggest decisions of your life or a sign that you may be making a huge mistake?

Doubts are part of good decision-making.

Every thoughtful decision should come with an honest evaluation of the choice. You may have said yes to a proposal based on emotions that felt like 100% certainty, but that feeling can’t last. Once you start doing the work of being engaged (yes, it’s actually a lot of work), part of that work is moving closer to certainty based on facts rather than just emotion.

While you’re planning your wedding and going through the marriage preparation process at your parish, you’ll face many choices and tough questions. You may find yourselves squabbling over who to invite to the wedding, and you may be asked to talk about aspects of your past, family life, and personality that hadn’t yet surfaced in your dating relationship.

All of these situations should be opportunities for you to “try on” what married life will be like and discover how you’ll handle these things as a couple. In fact, conflict should be welcomed during engagement so you can learn how your partner responds to you when things aren’t going well and whether or not you can resolve things in a healthy way.

Conflict is an opportunity to test the relationship

The idea that healthy couples don’t fight is a myth. The opposite is actually true; couples who repress disappointment, disapproval, and disagreement to avoid conflict inhibit their ability to move into a deeper, healthier relationship.

While constant arguing certainly isn’t the goal, both partners should feel free to express their opinions and should be growing in their ability to work through disagreements in ways that make each of them feel heard, valued, and considered. Couples experiencing conflict during engagement shouldn’t be concerned that they are facing struggles. They should be concerned when those struggles reveal unhealthy patterns. Learning how to work through disagreements is a valuable skill healthy couples will use over and over again during their marriage.

How do you know you’re not ready?

When conflict arises during engagement, it can be a sign that you simply need to work through some issues, learn better methods of communication, or get to know each other better. Stress has a way of bringing things to the surface that don’t come up when everything is going well. Certain character traits and coping mechanisms are difficult to hide when we’re stressed out.

When engaged couples begin to see and experience these new sides of their partners, it presents new challenges to navigate in the relationship. How you handle those challenges can help you determine how compatible you actually are, and even if you’re really ready for marriage.

Here are a few red flags to pay attention to:

  • Inability to resolve conflict: When disagreements arise, you feel ignored, humiliated, or insulted for your desire to work things out.
  • Unhealthy coping mechanisms: You or your partner resort to substances, pornography, gambling, or work to avoid dealing with conflict or actively taking part in wedding planning and preparation.
  • Overwhelming pressure: You feel crushed by the pressure to please your partner, family, and/or spiritual leaders. You feel you have to have the perfect relationship and the perfect wedding, and you base your decisions on what others want rather than considering your own emotional, spiritual, and physical needs.
  • Secrets: You or your partner are hiding a significant incident or piece of information from one another, for fear that it would destroy the relationship. This could be anything that makes you feel shame, such as a past relationship, financial debt, or a medical issue.
  • Resistance to spiritual preparation: When you’re seeking marriage in the Catholic Church, you’re preparing to receive a sacrament. This is a deeply meaningful act that requires certain steps to fulfill. If either partner is resistant or apathetic about these responsibilities, it needs to be addressed.

How to get help with pre-wedding doubts?

If you’re dealing with any of the above red flags, or anything else that’s causing you to question whether marriage is still the right decision, the best thing to do is ask for help. As uncomfortable as it may feel, you’ll need an outside perspective.

Help can range from clergy and professional counselors to a long-time married couple in your parish, family, or friend circle. Connecting with clergy and/or a mentor couple is part of the marriage preparation process at many parishes, but it can be valuable to go to a variety of sources for a broader source of wisdom and support. In Church environments, this is called ‘discernment’, the art of separating, analyzing, and deciding the best course of action. All this is done in a prayerful state of mind with the help of a Spiritual Director or mentor.

If your marriage prep doesn’t include connecting one-on-one with clergy or a mentor couple, or you feel like you need a broader perspective, you’ll have to be proactive about seeking help.

Here are some online resources that can help you find a qualified Catholic counselor:

You can also search your local diocese website for information about counseling services from regional Catholic Charities or Catholic Human Services organizations.

Here are a few things to consider when choosing a mentor couple to connect with:

  • Have you experienced the couple in a variety of settings, and do they have a marriage you’d like to emulate?
  • Do they seem to have healthy relationships with their parish community, family, and friends?
  • Are they open and non-judgemental? Do they operate as people of grace and mercy?
  • Are you comfortable opening up to them? Do you trust they will be confidants?
  • Do they share your faith and values about marriage as a Sacrament and lifelong commitment?
  • Are they recognized as leaders in your parish or recommended as mentors by clergy? If you are unsure, ask your priest or deacon.

Friends and family are also a valuable part of your support system, but it’s okay to look beyond that circle for a bigger perspective. Dealing with serious doubts about your upcoming marriage should require as much help as you need from whatever sources you’re comfortable with.

What if you have to call off the wedding?

If you’re trying to make things work, you’ve reached out to others, and you’re still having significant doubts, it may be time to postpone or call off the wedding. This decision will never be easy, but it could be the best one to make.

If your relationship is worth working on, taking the pressure of the impending wedding date off the calendar can free you up to grow individually and as a couple. While canceling your wedding can usher in feelings of grief, failure, and embarrassment, it may also open the door for relief, focus, and healing. Those feelings should worked through if you truly want to strengthen a relationship worth saving and let go of a relationship that needed to end.

If you find yourself in a situation where the red flags were warning signs of an unhealthy marriage, you may want to consider individual counseling to help identify areas in your own life where growth would be beneficial. This work on your personal development will make you more likely to pass over future partners who have the same issues and move toward healthier companions both platonic and romantic.

Your wedding day should be the day you commit yourself to a partner you trust, someone you can rely on, and the person you can grow closer to every day – even after conflict. If you can’t enter into that commitment freely and wholeheartedly, it’s okay to push the pause button until you know for sure.

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New Finances Production

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Read Time: 2 minutes

What do engaged couples need to know about finances during marriage prep?

This is a big question to answer. Especially considering the diversity of couples who get married in the Catholic Church.

Did you know the average age of couples taking our online Catholic marriage prep course is 30?

We also serve couples who are widowed and entering into a second marriage, some are forming blended families, and some are already retired. We also have our share of twenty-somethings who are embarking on married life straight from their parent’s homes and financial protection.

That means we’re talking to couples on a spectrum that ranges from no experience managing money all the way up to experienced and wondering, “Why are they making me learn this?”

Finances Segment in Our Online Pre-Cana Program

We believe that a good Pre-Cana course will evoke curiosity and discussion because there is no way to cover every aspect of every subject a couple will face in a life together. So, when we updated the finances segment in Living Our Faith In Love we started with the Spiritual Principles of Money Management.

The new segment starts by unpacking our value as human beings created by God, and it explains how our understanding of our value can shape the way we view and handle our finances.

As presenters in the segment, Chris and I (Jessie) have learned time and time again that the root of our money struggles and fights is often a desire to find meaning and purpose in material things rather than our standing in Christ.

When we got curious about those struggles and started to talk about them, we gained the skills to navigate our challenges in new ways. That’s what we hope to pass along to the couples taking this course, and we hope we’ve been able to do that no matter what their experience is handling finances.

The new segment also includes tips on how to talk about money, how to resolve conflict, and a few practical tools we’ve used over the years to stay organized and steward our resources responsibly.

We had a great time preparing for and presenting this segment, and we hope couples taking Living Our Faith In Love enjoy it too. Even after 27+ years of marriage, we’re still learning how to spend, save, and share what we’ve been blessed with.

Whether you’re just starting out or you’re blending established portfolios with your partner, we pray that you’ll enjoy this new edition to our online Catholic marriage prep class!

– Chris & Jessie Wiegand

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My Interfaith Marriage

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Read Time: 3 minutes

The relationship between Protestants and Catholics can range from being ecumenically united to serve as Christ did, to the punchline of a good joke, to full-on violence between the two. Within that spectrum, many interfaith couples have come together and broken apart because of their theological differences. So how did we, as a mixed-race, interfaith, blended family, learn to lovingly edify each other in our walks with Christ?

The Backstory

It was two years after my (arguably) worst relationship when I began to open my heart again and pray for a husband. I had taken time to heal and resumed my intimate walk with the Lord. I felt called and ready to invite God into my desire for a holy man to share my life with. My main criteria for a partner were that he would know and love God, he had to be active in his faith, and that faith had to be his own.

I had no desire to be “unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 6:14-18), but my heart was open to someone from another Christian denomination.

Two weeks after I opened my heart to pursuit, in walked Branden, who was (and still is) a Lutheran pastor. He blew the other suitors out of the water with his ability to listen actively, his drive to serve God in concrete applications, and his strikingly handsome features (a gift of his Native American heritage).

Branden was baptized as a Lutheran at age 10, very active at Stony Lake Lutheran Summer Camp for over a decade, and became a pastor in 2018. Alternately, I am a cradle Catholic, served with NET Ministries, and spent most of my adult life working for Catholic Churches and with Catholic families.

Coming Together

While our faith backgrounds are uniquely different, they hold enough in common that we could grow together and respect one another. In the early days of our relationship, I asked him what he thought of Mary and the Eucharist, knowing that this would be a make-or-break moment.

He responded with shockingly similar views on the Eucharist, and, regarding Mary, said, “She carried Jesus into the world while facing a lot of hardship, of course she should be respected.”

Being on the same page on the “big” things brings a lot of peace, but our disagreements are also a blessing. In fact, our theological debates and conversations are one of my greatest joys in our relationship. I love that I married a man who has a formal education in theology as well as a personal relationship with Jesus. And he is still constantly learning. Often our evenings end with us sitting in our own chairs (similar to Carl and Ellie in Pixar’s UP) reading our separate spiritual works. This “parallel play” often leads to one of us saying, “Did you___?” and initiating a great conversation.

See Alonna’s article: My Journey with NFP in Real Life

Keeping the Peace

While mutual respect and religious conversations are very present in our faith relationship, there are still points of contention as well. However, these points are often deeper in the weeds, not a matter of salvation. Some common ones we visit are, “Why are there seven sacraments?” or “Was Mary a perpetual virgin?” or “Why would Sola Scriptura be valid?”

I feel like I can safely assume these are common questions in a Catholic and Protestant household.

No matter what disagreements we encounter, my husband and I hold fast to the mission that we want to love each other well as we spend our time on earth being the hands and feet of our savior Jesus.

Serving in Unity

Our unified goal of loving and serving Jesus is essential for the health and success of our relationship. It is how we can come together and see that while we have differences, our common ground is broader than the points we don’t see eye to eye on.

We’ve also been able to compromise graciously. We attend both a Catholic Church and the Lutheran church where he serves. We tithe to both, and we support both NET Ministries and Stony Lake Lutheran Summer Camp. We respected each other’s traditions when we were dating, and we prayerfully incorporated both churches into our marriage in significant ways…but more on that to come.

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Cultural Sensitivity

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Read Time: 2 minutes

Ministry in a Multicultural Church

Cultural diversity is a reality that touches not only our country but also the Church. Parishes have become a home to people from different cultural backgrounds. Today in our parishes, we find people who speak different languages, have different cultural and religious traditions, are different nationalities, races, etc.

All of them are present in what is now known today as a shared parish.

How Should We Respond?

Now more than ever, ministers in the Church need to be equipped with a special set of skills that include cultural sensitivity and multicultural competencies. These skills will ensure that the Church will continue carrying out its mission of evangelization to all nations, as Jesus commanded his apostles, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19)

Doing ministry in a multicultural parish starts with:

  • A desire to relate and get to know people from other cultures.
  • Respect for those who come from a cultural background different from your own.
  • The awareness that the Church is Universal, there’s a place for everyone at the table.

What Can We Build?

Once this basic set of skills have been established, we can start outlining the more specific skills or competencies that are necessary when serving as a minister in a multicultural parish. This set of competences have been developed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in the program Building Intercultural Competencies for Ministers and they include:

  • Developing intercultural communication skills.
  • Expanding our knowledge of those obstacles that impede effective intercultural relations.
  • Fostering ecclesial integration rather than assimilation.

Intercultural Competence is the capacity to communicate, relate, and work across cultural boundaries. It involves developing capacity in three areas: knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

  • Knowledge of the different dynamics, techniques, modes, and styles of communication in different cultural settings.
  • Skills to build relationships based on respect for people of different cultures and ethnicities.
  • Attitude of openness to other cultures, attitude of wanting to learn from other cultures, attitude of seeing cultural differences as a way of life not as a problem to be solved.

What Could Result?

As a Family Life Director serving in a diocese or in a parish, your ministry will be so much more efficient if you cultivate these skills and develop these competencies. You will be not only be more effective, but you will also be more faithful to the call we have received from the Lord, “that they all may be one.” (John 17:21).

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Networking With Fellow Family Life Ministers

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Read Time: 2 minutes

You Are Not an Island: The Value of Networking With Fellow Family Life Ministers

Picture an island in the middle of the ocean. The words that come to mind when you think of an island may be: disconnected, isolated, lonely, independent. While these are accurate, we must also realize that islands are higher elevations of land that are still connected to the continents, but those connections are covered by water.

This analogy helps us to think about ourselves as Family Life/Marriage ministers. Many times, we think we are alone, disconnected, isolated, lonely, and independent, but we are not. There are many connections out there that we may not see, but they are truly there to help us in our ministry.

Changing Your Mindset

First, we must think about ministry as relational. Ministry is not something we do alone. The document from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord, tells us:

“Ministry is diverse and, at the same time, profoundly relational. This is so because ministry has its source in the triune God and because it takes shape within the Church understood as a communion. Ministerial relationships are grounded first in what all members of Christ’s Body have in common.”

Enabling Your Growth

Second, we must look at the benefits we obtain when we connect, network, and collaborate with other Family Life/Marriage Ministry minsters both locally and around the country:

  • Best practices: One thing that is common in ministry is that we share our joys! We share what works, our successes. When we network with other ministers, we learn what has worked for them, and we can implement those best practices into our own areas of ministry.
  • New resources: There may be a new book, a new video, a new program that other Family Life/Marriage Ministers are using that you didn’t know about. Networking gives you access to new resources that may be very effective for your ministry.
  • Get free advice: When you are not sure if a technique/resource/decision is effective, you can consult with your peers and ask for advice. This is completely free! You have access to other people’s experiences and points of view that can only enrich your own perspective.
  • Prayer partners: People who are in the same ministry position, but in other areas of your diocese, understand what you are going through, and they are your best supporters. Create your own prayer network! Find a few colleagues with whom you feel comfortable and establish the practice of praying for one another. Share prayer intentions and lift each other up in prayer!

Positioning Yourself for Success

All this to say, you are not expected to go through this responsibility of being a diocesan or a parish Family Life/Marriage Ministry minister alone. You have great people around you! Get in touch with them. Talk to them often. Visit each other if you live close by. Get together for coffee and for informal conversations.

All this will only make your ministerial experience even more successful.

Lastly, remember that we at The Marriage Group are also here to network and collaborate with you. We are your partners in ministry, and all of us would be more than happy to chat with you and share our experiences in ministry.

We wish you all the success in the world!

Claudio Mora and The Marriage Group Team.

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How the Pandemic Changed Engaged Catholic Couples

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Read Time: 3 minutes

In 2022, we were blessed to serve over 6,000 engaged Catholic couples from 72 countries around the world.

We recently reflected on the data collected from our course participants, and we saw a marked difference in a couple of key areas. As ministry leaders, you have likely experienced these changing demographics in your work with couples.

Here are a few things we learned about how the pandemic changed engaged Catholic couples, and how that affects marriage and family life ministry.

Average Ages:

  • Bride: 30
  • Groom: 32

What changed: The average age of both has increased by 1 year. This number has been rising steadily in the U.S. since the early 2000s when brides were around 25 and grooms were around 26. The average age is only slightly lower for Catholic couples than it is for the general population.

Engagement Length:

  • Average: 642 days

The length of engagement is significantly longer than in previous years. In the past, the average was around 500 days. This is due to postponed and rescheduled weddings because of COVID-19.

Location:

  • Same Location: 83%
  • Different Locations: 5%
  • Combination: 12%

More couples are using our programs from the same location. Our online courses are being used for a variety of reasons by couples who are not separated by distance.

Living Situation:

  • We live separately: 28%
  • We have been living together for more than a year: 51%
  • We have been living together for less than a year: 14%
  • I’d rather not say: 7%

More couples are cohabitating than in past years. Our data shows that at least 65% of couples were cohabitating, and it could be closer to 72%. This was the most significant change in our post-pandemic data, and we believe it directly affects all areas of marriage and family life ministry.

How Should We Respond?

With the increase of engaged couples cohabitating, what is our responsibility? It’s clear that those preparing Catholic couples for marriage are at the front lines of this phenomenon. It’s also clear that this trend has been steadily increasing over the years, and the pandemic only exacerbated it.

The United States Catholic Conference addressed this issue in 1999 when almost half of engaged couples were cohabitating. In the Report on New Realities of Pastoral Practices (https://www.usccb.org/topics/marriage-and-family-life-ministries/marriage-preparation-and-cohabiting-couples), the USCC stated:

Those who choose to marry instead of continuing to cohabit are the “good news” in a culture that is increasingly anti-marriage. Those cohabiting couples who move to marriage seem to be the “best risk” of a high-risk group: they have fewer risk factors than those cohabitors who choose not to marry. Even so, they still divorce at a rate 50% higher than couples who have never cohabited. They are a high-risk group for divorce and their special risk factors need to be identified and addressed, especially at the time of marriage preparation, if the couples are to build solid marriages.

The Report continues by reminding those preparing couples for marriage that this is a teachable moment. It is “an opportunity for evangelization and catechesis.”

Cohabitating couples inevitably approach marriage with habits that could lead to higher divorce rates, infidelity, and conflict; it’s the responsibility of those preparing couples for marriage to address those issues during marriage prep. The USCC Report urges clergy and lay ministers to avoid the extremes of harshly condemning couples for cohabitation or ignoring the issue altogether.

Discussing Cohabitation During Marriage Prep: Approaching Couples With Curiosity

Since it’s clear that we will all be ministering to an increased number of cohabitating couples, how could we approach the topic in a way that leads couples toward a more sacred view of marriage and commitment?

The advice found in the USCC’s report reminds us that curiosity is the key to opening up an honest conversation with couples.

Encourage the couple to reflect on their situation and why they decided to cohabit and to provide insights into possible consequences, factors that may present special challenges to them, or put them at risk for later marital disruption.

Asking good questions will not only provide insight into the couple’s character, beliefs, and habits, it will also enable them to explore how those things may affect their future marriage. Asking those questions with the spirit of understanding and an honest desire to see the couple reconciled to God, the Church, and one another can help them learn where they may have gone astray and accept the call to return to Catholic teaching on marriage and family life.

Moving Forward With Today’s Couples

Although these statistics aren’t what we hoped to see, we recognize that this is the reality of life for the couples we serve. In light of this data, The Marriage Group is looking for thoughtful and innovative ways to address these changing demographics in a way that honors Catholic teaching and promotes the gospel truths of love, mercy, and grace.

We also pray for your ministry to couples, acknowledging the many conversations that you have with cohabitating couples and the tension you may feel between honoring the standard God has called you to uphold and the current state of relationships in our parishes.

For more information on this topic, we recommend the USCC’s Report on New Realities of Pastoral Practices available here: (https://www.usccb.org/topics/marriage-and-family-life-ministries/marriage-preparation-and-cohabiting-couples)

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National Marriage Week Advice

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Read Time: 5 minutes

For National Marriage Week, we asked ministry leaders and married couples, “What is one important thing couples need to know in their first year of marriage?”

Here are some of our favorite replies:

One thing Mike and I have learned is that communication is key. Whether that’s communicating your goals, your feelings, your likes and your dislikes, it is so important. An open and honest line of communication prevents any misunderstandings and assumptions. You always hear “communication is key”, but there truly is a lot of truth to that.

We have also learned how important it is to be on the same page when it comes to decision-making. We aren’t always, but anytime that we aren’t, we’re able to compromise.

And lastly, but maybe most importantly, we pray. We pray together and on our own time. Our spiritual journey as a unit gets stronger and stronger. We remind ourselves that God won’t do the work for us. Mike and I have to do the work in our marriage and ask for help when we need it – and God hears us. He has helped us more times than I can count. Talking to Him has brought a lot of peace in our relationship.

Those three things have made our marriage very strong. We are going on three years of marriage and have already overcome a lot of obstacles. Through all of those obstacles, nothing about our love for each other has changed. We never place blame, we never distance, and we always say “I love you”.

Sydney and Mike – Married 2+ years – Pittsburgh, PA

Develop a habit of mutual prayer.

Retired Priest – Anonymous

Be intentional. Choose love every day. Be active in communicating, regrouping, and continuing to know and respond to each other more effectively every day. Care for your marriage like you care for any living thing….attend to its needs, feed it, love it, and above all spend time on it.

Dianne Vadney – Family Ministry Coordinator – Manitowoc WI

You are never alone, as a person, as a couple. Christ is always there, along with other Sacramental Married Couples.

From: Dcn. Adrian Jimenez – Director of Marriage and Family Life – Lubbock Diocese

You must always have love, respect, and a sense of humor in your marriage, but not necessarily in that order!  Sometimes having that sense of humor, learning to laugh together, is just as important.  Having all three (love, respect, humor) can make for many happy memories in the years to come.

Barbara & Jim McAloon – Pre-Cana Hosts – Washington, NJ

Learn to accept his/her whole being including his/her whole family. Always ask guidance to our Loving Almighty God the Father in everything you do. Make “God ” the center of your married life. Understand each other’s weaknesses, and praise all beautiful things he/she makes.

Lorna & Brian –  Married 17 years – City of SJDM

Remember your vows, always give more than you take, always say I love you and mean it. Life can change in a split second, and forever never feels like long enough when you love someon. Take the good days with the bad days because many more of both are to come!!! COMMUNICATE!!!!  LISTEN!!! Don’t lose yourself, but remember to grow with your partner too!!!

Jamie and Zatch – Married 1 year – Bluffton

Manage your spending, and discuss issues or concerns quickly not allowing it to pile up.

Blessing & Larry – Married 2 Years – Chicago

When you get stuck, ask for help when you need it. It’s a strength to ask for help, not a weakness. Start by asking God to bring you the best people to help you with your marriage.

Sharon Witzell – Program Coordinator, Office of Marriage and Family Life – Wichita, Kansas

Please be careful when buying a TV. TVs can be super addictive, and please never put a TV in the bedroom. The bedroom is your holiest place in the house; please keep it sacred.

From: Alex and Kristene – Married 1 year – Toronto, Canada

Good question: What’s one important thing couples need to know in their first year of marriage?

  • Remember to pray, pray, pray together (each day…) and listen to each other “with heart”…
  • Remember to “see” the other in charity (with love)  – In other words, recognize the ‘image of God’ in their beloved (especially in facing trials and difficult moments). We are longing to be seen with ‘eyes of love’ (as God sees each one of us…)
  • Always affirm one another. Remembering these simple words “You are worth much!” (When we begin a conversation with an affirmation or a little ‘thanksgiving prayer’,  it paves the way for a healthy conversation when disagreements rise in the day-to-day living. We are imperfect and make mistakes. Learning to walk with each other “in good times and in not-so-good times.”

I offer a little prayer that my beloved (husband) Tony and I pray each day:

Prayer of Spouses for Each Other
Lord Jesus, grant that I and my spouse may have a true and understanding love for each other.
Grant that we may both be filled with faith and trust.
Give us the grace to live with each other in peace and harmony.
May we always bear with one another’s weaknesses and grow from each other’s strengths.
Help us to forgive one another’s failings and grant us patience, kindness, cheerfulness,
And the spirit of placing the well-being of one another ahead of self.
May the love that brought us together grow and mature with each passing year.
Bring us both ever closer to You through our love for each other.
Let our love grow to perfection. Amen.

Mrs. Socorro Truchan – Diocese of Kalamazoo – CFLA

This exciting time of Marriage Prep is not only preparing the couple for a day or for a “picture”, it is a lifetime tool that they will be acquiring through all steps of Preparation. It’s so important that the couple realize they are trying to be equipped with valuable information that will help them through their marriage.

It’s also very important and personal experience. They need to find a group to join for example: marriage group, group of Christian families, Bible study, etc. Why? We are so busy… we as couples need to grow in our faith day by day.

Araceli Gutierrez – St. Joseph, Denver

Remember that you are both on the same team. As tense as some arguments may be, your spouse is not your enemy. Keeping this in mind can help to resolve conflicts faster and also deepen your relationship!

Deanna Johnston – Director of Family Life – Tyler, TX

That first year, patience with your spouse is a must! At least more so than usual. It’s going to be a learning experience for both of you. Patience and grace!

Azury and Armando Gutiérrez – Married 2 years – Encino, CA

Invest in your marriage — start when your love and devotion for one another are at an all-time high. Take classes to help your marriage succeed. Surround yourself with like-minded couples who believe in marriage and desire to have a strong foundation.

Above all else, realize that it is by the Grace of God that the two of you are called to a healthy marriage — and that atmosphere of grace compels you to put in the work to make your marriage extraordinary.

Gordon & Regina – 12 Years – Michigan

I think couples need to understand that there could be an adjustment period, and it can be very trying. Being from different upbringings and cultures could lead to a culture shock within the marriage. It is also important to “look for the flowers“. What that means is that each of them would have some flowers and some garbage (using the bee vs the fly). Prioritize your spouse’s good qualities over their bad when thinking of them and trying to adjust to your new dynamic.

Another important thing is to protect the image of your spouse that you project to others, especially your extended family members. Keep more in and within you than you share with others.

Know your strengths and weaknesses, and work on them individually and together.

Finally, do all that you can to build the foundations for an awesome FRIENDSHIP!!!!. Marriage needs friendship a lot more than people think.

NOTE: If they are Christian, they should try to pray together and grow their faith together.

I wish I had known all these things before I went into my marriage. We wouldn’t have struggled as much as we did, but that’s okay. We are having a much better time now and are growing stronger every day

Mike and ViVi, Years married- 3 years, Abuja, Nigeria

Be brave; resist the urge to hold back when things get hard or you learn something unexpected about your spouse. Expand your capacity for love. Forgive.

Chris & Jessie – 26 yrs – Michigan

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Discussing Finances with Your Partner

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Read Time: 2 minutes

Financial discussions can be difficult to have with your partner. Everyone has different philosophies about managing money. However, when couples get married, having healthy discussions about money can directly affect your relationship.

These tips can help guide you through difficult conversations about money.

Have an Open Mind

When discussing your finances, it’s important to keep an open mind. Everyone comes from varying financial backgrounds and may have had different experiences with money. These experiences contribute to a person’s financial outlook, and it can cause conflict when you and your partner don’t see eye to eye.

However, if you maintain an open mind during financial conversations, you may be able to work through disagreements quickly and with more effective solutions.

A great way to avoid confrontation is to spend time focusing on your partner’s strengths.

If the entire conversation is focused on their weaknesses, your partner may get defensive which could lead to arguments. Make sure you acknowledge the financial strengths of your partner so they feel supported throughout your discussion.

Create Realistic Goals

As with any important conversation with your partner, you should agree on a common goal.

Are you talking about setting up a budget, or do you want to save money to start a family? Whatever your goals are, be upfront and honest about them and try to keep the conversation on track.

Remember, when you’re setting up goals with your partner they need to be actionable and specific.

Realistic goals need to include dates and checkpoints, which makes it easier for individuals to hold themselves accountable.

Listen More, Talk Less

These conversations can get long and difficult, especially if either or both of you do all the talking and no listening. Be in tune with what your partner is expressing, simply stating that you understand their point of view. This can go a long way.

Utilizing active listening techniques throughout your discussion will help de-escalate any disagreements you and your partner have. If you feel like you and your partner are struggling with healthy communication, you may want to consult your priest, a marriage counselor, and/or a mentor to help guide you.

Discuss All of Your Finances

This is the best opportunity to be transparent about any financial goals you’re working towards or concerns that you may have. This could include debt, credit score, loans, homeownership, or any other financial matters.

Being transparent about your financial status is the best way to establish an open line of communication about finances going forward. Thoroughly understanding your financial status can help you make educated decisions that impact your lives as a couple, such as moving in together for the first time, applying for a mortgage, or opening a joint bank account.

These larger financial decisions will be greatly impacted by your current financial status and should be discussed openly.

Additionally, you should also explain what you’re prioritizing financially.

That way, you both understand which goals you want to achieve first, and how they can best support your family. Make time in the conversation so both of you can clearly articulate the value of achieving goals. In doing that, you will both feel understood and supported.

It’s Hard, But Not Impossible

Discussing finances with your partner can be scary, especially if you’ve never openly discussed these topics before. However, by keeping an open mind, setting goals, and actively listening you’ll be well on your way to a stronger relationship and even better future conversations about money.

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When Are Outside Friendships Ruining Your Marriage?

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Read Time: 4 minutes

Having friendships with individuals and other couples is healthy for married couples.

We should all have a variety of people to engage with socially and consult for advice. Your best friend doesn’t have to be your partner’s best friend, but if your spouse can’t stand your BFF or vice versa, it’s going to create some tension.

So, how do you know if one of your friendships is negatively affecting your marriage?

1. Your Spouse Thinks Your Friend is Toxic

If your spouse has seriously negative feelings about one of your friends, you cannot ignore it. If the person who you’ve committed to as a lifelong intimate partner expresses this level of concern, failing to take their advice will damage your relationship.

Allow your partner to explain why they dislike your friend, and discuss options for handling the relationship.

As someone on the outside looking in, and someone with your best interest in mind, your spouse may be able to identify unhealthy behaviors that you’ve just accepted as part of the friendship. If you have a friend who frequently manipulates you, takes advantage of your kindness, or uses you as a dumping ground for their negative emotions, that likely won’t play well with your spouse.

Avoiding the conversation with your spouse or defending your friend’s bad behavior will lead to conflict in your marriage.

Especially if it becomes clear to your spouse that you are more loyal to your friend than you are to them. If you find yourself squabbling with your partner about a friendship, you’ll need to come to an agreement about how this friendship fits into your life. You will likely need to set boundaries with your friend, and let them know that you can no longer tolerate their destructive behavior.

If they can’t respect that, you may have to walk away.

2. Your Friend Doesn’t Approve of Your Marriage or Your Marital Culture

Adjusting to life as a married couple takes time. Even couples who’ve dated for years find life after the wedding is different than they imagined.

However, eventually, couples slip into routines and behaviors that uniquely mark their lives together and collectively make up their marital culture.

This culture is like any other with its own rituals, style of communication, foods, and distribution of roles among other things. Couples usually gravitate toward others who have similar cultures, describing the experience as “clicking” or “connecting”.

Having a friend who doesn’t approve of your marriage is kind of a deal breaker.

If your friend can’t support you in this major area of your life, their disapproval will become a source of constant conflict. If the issue is with your marital culture, there may be some room for compromise and acceptance. Communicate openly and determine what the issue is. If it’s something simple like public displays of affection that bother your friend, you may be able to take a break when they are around. More deeply held convictions that make up who you are as a couple may require some grace and understanding from your friend rather than an overhaul of your beliefs.

3. A Friend is Demanding a Level of Relationship Reserved for Your Spouse

A close friendship is a blessing and can be a safe place to process your feelings and talk about important things. However, friendship dynamics may change after marriage, and it’s natural to begin going to your spouse to talk about many of the things you used to communicate with your friends. You may even decide to share most things with your partner first and just recap with your friends.

Healthy friendships can handle this shift, even if it takes a period of adjustment. The line begins to grow blurry however, when a friend becomes jealous, resentful, or competitive of your spouse.

Good friends will be understanding of the changing dynamic of your relationship, even if they grieve the loss of your exclusive attention. Toxic friends will punish you for not meeting their relational demands, and they will try to make you feel guilty for being devoted to your spouse.

Removing Toxic Friendships from Your Life

If you’ve given your friends the benefit of goodwill, and talked through the changes brought on by your marriage, you should be able to step into a new and healthy era of friendship. Your connection with your spouse may even help your friendships become healthier as they offer perspective and help you communicate better with your friends.

But if you’ve clearly identified that your friendship is unhealthy and there are no signs it will improve, it may be time to move on.

Letting go of a friend is never easy, even if walking away from their destructive habits frees you from emotional pain. I’m not even sure you can un-love someone who you’ve cared about and invested in relationally. When friendships end, it is rarely mutual and positive, so you will have to trust your decision and be as respectful as possible.

Developing a Friendship With Your Spouse

Healthy marriages are marked by a strong friendship between partners. They have fun together, communicate openly, and want what’s best for each other. They aren’t greedy or possessive, and they support their partner having all kinds of friends. They love spending time together, but they also see the joy that outside friendships can bring to their partner and their relationship.

Partners who are good friends will also help you identify the people in your life who aren’t good friends.

They may do it verbally, or you may just start seeing the contrast between the way they care for you and the way an unhealthy friend tears you down. Either way, your marriage can provide a safe place to process outside relationships and a safe haven when you have to remove a toxic friend from your life.

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Your Spouse Comes First, Even if You Have Kids

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Read Time: 4 minutes

Three Things I’ve Learned After 25 Years of Marriage: Part One

This may seem odd, but I don’t really like giving marital advice.

In order to give advice, you need to be thought of as someone who has attained a certain level of expertise on the subject at hand. In the area of marriage, even after 25+ years, I do not feel like an expert.

However, early on in our marriage my husband and I agreed that we would alway try to be learners, that we would try to grow individually and as a couple so we could have a strong and healthy relationship. We’ve kept that promise, and I’ve learned three important things along the way. Here is part one.

Nurturing Your Relationship Gets Harder When You Have Kids

It’s incredibly tempting to let your whole world revolve around your children when you become parents. Without even trying, kids are all-consuming with their physical, emotional, and educational needs.

This doesn’t stop as they become self-sufficient and the exhaustion of raising them transitions from worrying about feeding schedules and developmental milestones to their high school grades and dating choices.

Many parents shift, or even slowly drift, to expending all of their time and energy on their kids and neglecting their relationship with one another.

Date nights start being put off for school recitals and sporting events, conversations transition to detail swapping and scheduling logistics, and physical intimacy dwindles as couples deal with fatigue, fussy babies, and complicated bedtime routines.

Children Are Supposed to Leave the Nest, Spouses Are Not

One of the goals of parenting is to release self-sufficient adults into the world to make their own lives and create their own families. Couples who understand this realize they have to fight to nurture their marriage alongside raising their children.

They know that someday their children will leave their home, and they need something greater than co-parenting to keep them together.

My husband and I learned this lesson in a variety of ways over the years. We felt it as tension and anger that built up when we neglected each other. We saw it when we watched couples who made children their #1 priority struggle when their kids became adults. We realized it when we recognized that our kids, even when they were older, couldn’t handle our emotional needs in the way that we as partners could.

Understanding the Difference Between Your Identity and Your Roles

Because of the consuming nature of parenting, I sometimes found it difficult to separate my identity from the many roles I had as a wife and mother. I even introduced myself to new people by the roles I had:

“Hi, I’m Jessie, I’m Chris’s wife and a homeschooling mom of five.”

While those roles were wonderful and deeply satisfying parts of my life, they really weren’t who I was. They were wonderful gifts that allowed me to love and nurture people in an intimate way, but there was, and is, so much more to me.

Our identities, or who God uniquely created us to be, actually shape the way we perform our roles. We may grow and change, but the core of who we are remains quite steady. Understanding our identities can help us accept the changing demands of parenting, and it can help us have a healthier marriage.

Relieving Others of the Burden of Validating You

When our identities are rooted in the knowledge that God created us and gifted us with unique characteristics, we free ourselves and others from having to constantly validate us and make us feel important.

We love others more unconditionally, without a list of silent demands that can never fully be met.

This allows us to pour our attributes into parenting and being a spouse in healthier ways:

It allows us to create boundaries with our children because we can handle them being angry with us at times.

It allows us to let them become independent because we don’t need them to need us.

There are many more benefits, but these two alone are crucial to the health of your marriage.

Finding the Space to Focus on Your Marriage

There are a million ways to nurture your relationship as a couple while parenting, and it will be a constant flow of successes and failures, but making your marriage a priority is healthier for both couples and their children.

There are rhythms in life that provide natural places for rest, but couples with kids will always have to be intentional about spending time alone.

My husband and I used to joke that every time we went on a date, we ended up at the grocery store. Looking back, that’s not a negative thing at all.

Even taking the time to help each other with chores or routine tasks can be a bonding experience. In addition, couples have to figure out ways to be alone for small moments every day, and at least once a week for a couple of hours and once a year for an overnight retreat.

It’s About Progress, Not Perfection

If your marriage is growing, you’ll be able to see it. You’ll look back and see that you’ve grown closer, you understand each other more, and you’ve stopped having some of those petty arguments.

Your kids will see it too.

They will understand that their parents are a united front, there to offer love, support, and guidance as they navigate their way to independence.

It’s not always easy, but as your children become adults and move out, it’s incredibly gratifying to be left with your best friend. The partner you’ve shared so many memories with, worked through so many difficult moments with, and trusted with your most intimate thoughts and feelings. It also helps to have a wonderful friend who will still go to the grocery store with you.

Up Next:

Part Two: Your Sex Life Will Have Lots of Ups and Downs (Coming Soon!)

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