How to Tell If He's Not Marriage Material
Though the popular "Who the [BLEEP] Did I Marry?" show (on the Investigation Discovery channel) explores more extreme stories about married couples shocked by spousal secrets, everyday married couples sometimes wonder how they ended up in the kind of marriage they have, too. Financial devastation or unimaginable loneliness, for example, can cause wives to contemplate their choice of a husband. Usually, warning signs and signals purposed to prevent marital mistakes have been overlooked. Knowing some warning signs and signals while dating can prevent the misfortune of saying "I do" to a man that doesn't make good marriage material.
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Instructions
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Bible Scriptures and Scriptural Books Reveal Marriage Material Guidelines
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Get a Bible and search scriptures about love, dating, marriage and righteous men (to name a few). Bibles with a concordance, or an alphabetical index of all the words in a text, makes the search much easier. Simply go to the concordance in the Bible and look for the key words and the scriptures it references. For example, the concordance might list the scripture 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 under the key word "Love." For starters, knowing what the Bible characterizes as love shows you what is and isn't love---a key guideline on the path to determining a man who is and isn't marriage material.
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Do an online search if you're not comfortable with looking for the key word "scriptures" in a physical Bible. Just type key words such as "Bible scriptures for dating" or "Dating and the Bible," into an online search engine, then visit a site such as BibleGateway.com or BlueLetterBible.org to read about those scriptures that your search has revealed. The information can equip you with the knowledge to date successfully, helping to weed out the wrong kind of marriage partner.
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Read quality books, based on the Bible, about dating and selecting the right marriage partner. Books that require some action on your part, like making lists or using interviewing skills as a tool for dating, make the journey even more meaningful and beneficial. Biblical marriage and dating websites make for a good start to finding appropriate reading references.
Make Yourself Accountable
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Choose a person who has your best interest at heart, and who is Biblically sound to be accountable to. This accountability partner can help throughout your journey of discovering who is and isn't marriage material.
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Tell your accountability partner who you're dating and give them details about each date, to help you think clearly about the relationship. Sometimes feelings and emotions can get in the way of reason and common sense.
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Take your accountability partner on a double date or group outing with the person you are dating.
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Invite your accountability partner to tell you the positives and the negatives about the person over a period of time and based on a few group outings. Use their input to make the right decisions and decide if the person makes good marriage material.
Basic Checks
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Look at his friends. The kind of people a person chooses to hang out with tells a lot about the kind of person they are. One sure sign that he's not marriage material is if his friends despise marriage and celebrate fornication and adultery. Any man who calls people with that mindset friends usually feels the same way or will eventually be influenced to believe so.
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Consider his family. If you couldn't live for the rest of your life tolerating and dealing with his closest family members, he might not be marriage material for you. After all, he must make you his first priority, but somewhere down the line their relationship will play a part in your marriage.
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Ask questions about his financial stability. He should already have a job, and if he has a job that cannot provide for a family, you might ask him about future career goals and allow time to prove that he can meet those goals. It's wise to pay attention to his lifestyle, too. Can he get an apartment or home in his name with his credit? A car? If he can't do those things yet, he's not able to provide for a wife appropriately, and he isn't marriage material until he can.
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Tips & Warnings
When using a concordance, sometimes your key words might not be listed. In those cases look for a word similar to or pertaining to your key word. For example, "men" and "father" key word searches can lead to scriptures about the way a man is to treat a woman or the responsibilities of a father. Knowing these things can guide you to look for certain qualities when dating.
Keep the scriptural texts in context understanding that certain traditions were for certain periods of time and may not necessarily reflect the same exact notions for today. Make the principal applicable (instead of the tradition) in these cases.
Nothing can prepare you 100 percent for marriage, but paying attention to the warnings and signals can eliminate divorce and other threatening factors within the union.
Don't assume that a man is marriage material after just a short time, and if you decide he is marriage material, seek marriage counseling before tying the knot.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit no image by Adam Walter from Fotolia.com
