How to Begin Your Marriage

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By Lacey2shoes
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Wedding Rings

After all the excitement, happiness and inevitable stress of the wedding is over, suddenly you are faced with the fact that you now have to begin your marriage. Being a newlywed is a state that combines heightened happiness and love for your new partner, the normalcy of everyday life, and even stress when in comes times to incorporate two lifestyles into one. The beginning of a marriage can even hold a great deal of emotional stress, as two people strive to live together and share happiness. Each couple is completely different, and depending on whether or not they lived together before marriage or if they took part in pre-marriage counseling, some steps might be more relevant or challenging than others.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Step 1

Money. There is a reason why money is constantly listed as a factor in divorce. It's always difficult to join two different lifestyles and living patterns, but when you begin your marriage you have an even harder task: blending finances. There are endless things to fight about, from saving to spending, eating in or out, to buying or renting. Be prepared for some sticky conversations and realize that everyone has different ideas about money and different priorities. To minimalize stress, come up with a plan early on for saving, investing, and household expenses. The different categories can be few or many, but stick with the plan.
Step 2

Talk about expectations. It's inevitable that each person begins their role in the marriage based on their expectations of what it should look like. The problem occurs when, through a lack of communication, both partners fail to share their thoughts and therefore don't meet each others' expectations. Even after discussing individual perceptions, problems can still arise. A possible solution is not only talking about expectations, but also about how feelings are connected and making specific requests for behavior concerning the most important areas. There can still be lots of disagreements, however, and the key word is compromise.
Step 3

Learn how to fight. When a couple begins their marriage an inevitable thought is how easy it is to live without fighting. But every relationship will have tension, and a marriage is certainly no exception. Learn early how to fight properly, arguing for your ideas or feelings without hurting your partner. Containing hurtful experiences or disagreements within the moment of the fight is something that takes a lot of patience and strength to learn and continue to do, but it will reduce hurt feelings and contribute to a long, loving marriage.
Step 4

Plan traditions for your new family. When a couple gets married, they are making a new family. A fun activity is to plan new traditions with your partner. Sit down together and decide how you would like to celebrate holidays and special occasions. Take this time to decide how you will share your time with your respective families, also. Planning early where to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas reduces stress and tension, especially if you inform each family of your plans long before the holidays.
Step 5

Be generous with your free time. A common feeling when couples begin their marriage is the sense of losing their independence. Some couples spend all their free time with their new spouse while others rarely see each other, either using sports, shopping or other hobbies to maintain their independence. An important part of this new stage is keeping who you were before you got married, yet not losing sight of the work it takes to build a strong foundation for the marriage. Talk together about each person's feelings towards the amount of time spent with friends, on hobbies and at home.