When I interview candidates for our The Marriage Foundation certification training (and you may want to look
into it yourself after you have been married a couple of years), I ask them what they think is important for a successful marriage.
If they read our material, they will smilingly say marriage education. But if they haven’t studied our programs, I listen to how much they have been brainwashed by societal misinformation, compared to how much they rely upon from their own experiences.
If they say things like “learning how to keep my mouth shut,” I smile, knowing they are at least on the right track. After all, they began with “learning,” and marriage is really good for us if we realize, from the start, it is the greatest learning experience of all time.
If they say something like “it’s important to keep God in your marriage,” that sounds cool, but way too open ended to be meaningful; or “it’s important to have a good sex life,” that is also too vague and not necessarily true. I’ll know they haven’t looked at TMF material. I mean, it’s easy to make these cool-sounding statements, but they mean little in the context of day-to-day frustrations or opportunities.
To make your marriage successful you have to know what to do, when, and why. So, I want to list three real ways premarital education helps newlyweds and why.
1) Premarital education helps newlyweds avoid tensions, conflicts, and bad feelings. Proper marriage education explains, in understandable detail, the actual causes of those nasty things. Not by explaining the outer circumstances that seem to cause them, but by explaining how your mind reacts to events, and what you can then do about it. Because all events are essentially neutral. It is your individual mind that must be controlled not your soulmate’s actions.
For example, when your spouse says something irking, your first reaction may be to say something retaliatory, or may be to suck it up, depending on what you have always done. But when you are educated, you realize your mind is a bundle of controllable habits. So as soon as you feel tweaked, recall the inner steps to change the old patterns into marriage-building actions. It is quite effective, but, like learning anything, you are better off with a clear and logical process rather than winging it on bits of information.
2) Premarital education puts your marriage on a rapid trajectory of expanding love. Let’s not kid ourselves. Most couples settle in to routines of mundane day-to-day drudgery interrupted by a few good and bad events, like having children, holidays, illnesses, or job changes. Happily ever after is rare. But it doesn’t have to be.
A marriage made in heaven is often destroyed on Earth. However, when you learn what steps to take to increase your love, you will feel the sought after connection you desire.
Some of these actions are obvious, like remembering to say “I love you” multiple times a day. But others are less so, like making sure you say it sincerely.
3) Understand the achievable goals of marriage. Most people get married without knowing what marriage will, and will not, provide. The romantic ideas are fine, but those ignore the all-too-real human nature, particularly the differences in perspective that men and women have because of their biology.
When people expect impossible things, they set themselves up for failure. But when they know what to expect from each other, they can bring harmony and love.
What good is it to say men are from another planet? That creates juxtaposition. What you really want is mutual appreciation not mutual annoyance.
Premarital education helps newlyweds get a healthy start in their marriage. You will avoid the problems most couples get stuck in. You will know what to do. What could be better than that?