By: Francine and Byron Pirola
So you’ve been dating for a while. How do you know if you’re ready for marriage? Here are some signs that will help you discern whether you are ready to commit to marriage.
Marriage Readiness Check List
1. Self-growth: You help each other to be better people. You’ve grown and your partner has grown throughout your courtship. Marriage is a ‘growing up’ institution — it’s a relationship that helps us to mature and change for the better. If you haven’t seen positive personal growth in yourself or your dating partner, it’s a warning sign: most marriages break down because one or both refuse to change. So a willingness to grow is fundamental.
2. Family: your family approves of your choice and encourages your relationship. You have good relationships with your partner’s family. We know that some families are dysfunctional and their objections to a choice of partner may not be grounded on good principles. However, most families are functional and they know and love their child/sibling/niece/nephew well. If every one in your family is shunning the relationship, there’s a good chance that they can see something that you can’t. So don’t be too hasty to dismiss family disapproval.
3. Friends: You have maintained healthy friendships and your friends approve of the relationship and affirm that you are a better person because of your relationship.
One of the biggest dangers for dating couples is that they loose contact with friends in the intensity of the romance and end up committing to marriage, not because they are ready or a good match, but simply because to break up would leave them lonely and friendless. The absence of friends to meet your emotional needs is not a good enough reason to commit to marriage and will almost certainly back-fire down the road.
4. Attraction: You enjoy a healthy attraction for each other and share a sexual energy.
The key word here is ‘healthy’; what we’re referring to is a balance. A relationship consumed by uncontrollable lust will not survive and will struggle to maintain sexual exclusivity. Equally so, a relationship where there is no sexual passion will also struggle, especially in our present sex-charged culture. Sex is a wonderful and important communication between a husband and wife and in healthy marriages there should be regular, enjoyable sex.
5. Sacrifice: You and your partner are prepared to make sacrifices for each other and for the relationship, surrendering recreational hobbies, personal preferences and career opportunities if necessary. All good things have a cost and it’s simply not possible to have it all. To establish a life-long marriage, both spouses need to be willing to prioritise the relationship and the family over their own interests.
6. Boundaries: You both respect each other’s boundaries, whether they are moral, sexual, financial, physical or emotional. Respecting boundaries is one of the key ways we honour and value our spouse. Every marriage partnership will have differences in their boundaries — both need to be prepared to abide by the other’s boundaries, otherwise resentment and wounds will accumulate in the relationship and undermine it.
7. Communication: You talk regularly and deeply, sharing your inner thoughts, dreams, fears, feelings and needs. You’ve discussed your future goals and religious beliefs and are open to exploring each other’s spirituality. Newly in-love couples are often quite good at this… they talk for hours and are fascinated by each others ideas and feelings. We are not static entities; we grow and change everyday, so the need for deep communication is just as important for the relationship that is 10, 20 or 50 years old as for the 2 month one.
8. Trust: You don’t withhold information from each other or keep secrets. You have disclosed your past mistakes and history. You are transparent about how you spend your money, with who you spend your time and what you do when apart.
Many a relationship has fallen apart because one or both failed to disclose important information. The sense of betrayal can be immense when we discover that our spouse has be keeping secrets or withholding information — it’s often worse than the actual secret itself.
9. Values: you’ve talked about your values, the things that are really important to you, especially the marital values of fidelity, openness to children, exclusivity and permanence.
Marriage is a permanent and sexually exclusive relationship between a man and a woman — and for good reason… a sexual relationship is the gateway to conceiving children and when children are involved, the stakes are very high indeed. No longer is the relationship just about the two of you, it’s about the rights of your children to be raised in a loving home by both biological parents. Sexual exclusivity ensures that they are your biological children; permanence ensures that the relationship will last until they are grown up.
10. Addictions: You have dealt with any addictions (drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, gaming etc) and are free to make a choice for love. If you’re enslaved to an addiction of any kind, your spouse will always be second to the addiction. It’s a recipe for strife and marriages have a very difficult time surviving with an addiction. It’s a mistake to think that you will deal with it later, after the wedding. If you or your partner has any addiction, our advice: make it a priority to deal with it. Put the relationship on hold until it’s done.
Credit to Francine and Byron Pirola of SmartLoving.