Marriage Insights - Quotes on “Preparing for Marriage”

Marriage is an intertwining of two hearts and two lives to help each other live up to our potential. (Cindy Wright)

• Couples who believe that divorce is not an option going into a marriage are less likely to take steps toward ending their relationship. Marriage is not a 50/50 relationship, as we often hear. It requires 100 percent from both partners. If you want to make your marriage last longer than the wedding flowers, it must be a top priority in the lives of both individuals. (Julie Baumgardner, Executive Director of First Things First Firstthings.org)

• Leslie Parrott, who with her husband, Les, wrote the book Saving Your Second Marriage, says people go into their “encore marriages” with “a mythical sense of security that they won’t make the same mistakes again.” But, on the contrary, they make all kinds of mistakes. Some gravitate toward people who are similar to their previous spouses. Others get remarried to “get even” with a former spouse, or for financial reasons.

Still others rush into another marriage because, being divorced, they feel out of step with the community or wonder if they’re “bad” people. “You’re fragile after divorce. You might be depressed,” says Parrott, a professor at Seattle Pacific University, and that can lead to fantasizing about marriage, particularly by women. But, if anything, marriage can actually be harder the second time around, burdened with pressures that the first marriage didn’t have. (Smartmarriages- Subject: Remarrying: Way of Life/Black Marriage)

• A relationship that will improve over time must have a solid foundation from the beginning. If you’ve ever tried to build a campfire, you know the importance of using seasoned wood. Green wood (or recently cut wood) does not burn well. It makes a lot of smoke but never a roaring fire. Seasoned wood, on the other hand, gives warmth. The same is true of relationships. A green relationship does not burn well because it hasn’t been seasoned. Only time and experience can season a relationship. (From the book, “Questions Worth Asking Before the Ring” by William Coleman)

• Some couples need to share the secrets that may cause a lapse of trust further down the road in marriage. For example, some men might open up and admit that they once made a bad decision with another woman that resulted in a pregnancy. Some women might tell about a lapse of faithfulness while still in current relationship.

I once married a couple in which the groom had disclosed to his fiancé that he had killed his father in self-defense when he was a teenager. And not all secrets are heavy ones. One fellow admitted that he had never liked his fiancé’s hairstyle. One young woman revealed that she felt uncomfortable with his friends. A relationship that can open up to this level of honesty and trust is bound to deepen. (Todd Outcalt, Before You Say “I Do”)