Engagement and Marriage

This we were discussing the topic of engagement, and marriage. We mainly covered the tasks of engagement, the purpose of marriage, and early marital adjustments. Neither of these are easy. They all take time and effort on both the man and the woman. They both take a lot of communication and understanding.

Once a couple becomes engaged, it’s not a walk in the park. It takes a lot of talking to the other person. During class we made a list of things that usually happens when the couple becomes engaged. Obviously the first thing we talked about was planning a wedding and a reception. Everyone thinks that that is only the girl’s responsibility in the relationship. That’s not the case. We need to remember that it is “our wedding not mine”. By remembering this and actually including each other in the planning, it will actually bring the couple closer together. The next big topic we discussed was what will happen when they are married. The couple needs to establish what things they want to do once they are married. In a way come up with rules once they are married and living with each other. This also includes finding a house and developing a budget. Another thing to discuss is the couple’s education. These are some of the questions we discussed as a class. Are both going to continue their education? How far do we want to go into our education before we start to have kids? These to questions are pretty important in my opinion. Another thing we discussed was what friends are we still going to include in our lives and which ones are we going to not include. Once a couple is married, they are there for each other and they need to rely on each other and not their old friend or support group (parents).

In class we came up with a couple of reasons of why people marry. Once of the reasons we came up with was so we aren’t lonely in life. It’s always nice to have someone by your side. Another obvious reason is to have kids. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints marriage is necessary for exaltation, marriage helps us repent, progress, and grow, and we are able to fulfil our fullest potential. Some people believe that you can’t be complete without being married.

We all know that we someone is first married there are some adjustments that are needed to be made within the first month. The first one is adjusting to actually living with someone. Your whole routine will completely change because you have to take in someone else’s routine. Another big thing is that you no longer are caring for just yourself, you have your spouse to be caring for as well. As I mentioned before you have to adjust your friend groups. You may even have to start off with finding new married friends. You have to adjust with the other’s habits. Another thing that I’m not going to talk a lot about, but it is important is your intimacy. It’s important to know and establish what the other person want and what they are expecting of the other person. You also have to establish the roles and responsibilities they will be taking on.

There is some adjustment that you will have to make within the first year of being married as well. One of the big reasons is, which family are you going to spend holidays and just time with? Each person in the relationship want to spend time with their family. But since they are married now they have to decide as a couple which family they are going to go visit. Even after the first year you are still adjusting to sharing literally everything but eventually after time you will work everything out.