Just a Smattering

I can’t decide what I want to talk about today so I’ll talk about a smattering of things.  This blog is titled random musings so I should keep with the theme.

So I’m in this class that’s just entitled, Marriage, so you can guess what it’s about.  I read tons of talks, books, watch video clips, and so on about marriage. I’m learning lots of great things about marriage and I’ve been attempting to reiterate those messages through these blog posts.  But as a single person, I can’t help but take everything I’m learning and applying it to a single person's situation. It’s great to know a bunch of tips and tricks about what to do when you’re married, but you kinda have to marry someone first, and it doesn’t make sense to think you can neatly pack up what you learn about marriage in a class and only use it once the knot is tied.  Every Marriage Lesson for a single person is a lesson on dating. For some reason, I feel like lots of people view dating and marriage as separate things. It’s almost like dating is just for hanging out and getting to know the person enough to be able to go, “Huh, ya I like him and he’s cute” and then you “start” once the I do's are over. It’s like loitering around in a car lot for a while, seeing a nice Ford and going, “Huh, ya that’s a nice one, it’s shiny and I think I’ll like riding around in it, check please!”  Once you’ve bought the car and start using it, there's still a chance you will indeed like it and everything will be fine. But odds are if you never took it out for a spin before you bought it, you’re going to find a lot of things about it that you didn’t consider to be important and maybe you don’t like it so much. It seems silly that anyone would just look at a car, have a little background from the research you did online on the make and model, and then make a big purchase and commitment like that. But so is going on one date, hanging out for about three months, and then getting married.  Again, I’m not saying that doesn’t work out for some people, but it shouldn’t be considered the standard, and it totally is these days. If you want to have a marriage that for example, can healthily resolve conflict, have a dating relationship that does. Go on dates and do things to be able to see the person you're dating and all their sides. Maybe find and discuss something you have different opinions on and see how they react, or how you react in the conversation. Date them long enough to get passed the “Honeymoon phase” where you’re on your best behavior.
In Wallace Goddard’s book, “Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage”, he talks about the importance of character in a healthy relationship. “Sometimes we imagine that learning some tidy set of skills will enable us to process our partnership woes effectively. But good marriage is not about skills. It is about character.”  Not only do you have to be actively observing the person you’re dating, but you also have to be constantly observing yourself. If good character is the key to a happy marriage (or life for that matter) then you’ve gotta get yourself in order. Be the person you want to date. For example, in John Gottman’s book, “Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, he says one of the biggest points of conflict and reason for divorce is money. How we spend and budget our money comes down to a mindset, personality, or belief, and if yours is drastically different from your spouse, then you’re going to have problems. My ideas on money are heavily influenced by how my parents went about it. Thankfully my parents are frugal practical people who taught me to be thrifty and smart, or in other words, they raised a cheapskate. But that alone doesn’t mean I’m super great at a budget or saying no to expensive Thai food.  But recently I’ve felt the push to really crack down and develop good habits with money. If you want to not have money be a major conflict in your marriage, learn to budget and develop good habits and also be aware of the habits of the person you date. What do they spend their money on? How much do they spend? Ask them questions about how they budget and even what they view as weaknesses in themselves in regards to money. If you want someone who is smart with money, be smart with money, then observe your potential person with all the scrutiny of your (or their) mother.  
There are countless things we can all work on to become better future spouses.  I think our time as single young adults should not be spent waiting around for marriage, but progressing and experiencing life so that we can bring a much more rounded healthy person to the table, and to make sure we are dating with our eyes wide open.

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