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In six months, I will be tying the knot. I will be 25 years old, and changing my life completely. And I couldn’t be more excited.
Guys around me think they’re being funny. They give me the "*cough*Don’tdoit!*cough*" gag and tell me how women change after you marry them. That I should stay "free" as long as possible.
They’re idiots.
I can’t wait to be married. I am ready to settle down with the woman I love. Why should I put it off? Here is just a partial list of the benefits of being married that I am looking forward to:
- Companionship. Even the toughest people in the world need someone to share life with. I don’t care if you consider yourself a "loner" or "somebody who doesn’t NEED anybody", everyone needs relationships. You are not just signing on to your home life with the person, you are signing on to a lifelong friendship – the most intimate of friendships you can have, and that’s something everybody needs. Amanda and I don’t just think we should get married; we genuinely enjoy each other’s company. We can joke around and poke fun at each other when we want to, and when we can be ourselves, we know we’ve got it made.
- Responsibility. Any time I see another "man-child" out there, I get a little sick to my stomach. I don’t know when we all decided that our 20s were just an extension of our stupid teenage years. Our grandparents and great-grandparents served our country in wars when they were 18. I’m not saying we need to serve in wars, but we’re old enough to support ourselves and start making adult decisions. Let’s man up. Getting married means your actions start affecting other people (spouse, children, etc.), and men and women need to start settling down in their 20s. Yes, we’re still young, but is that an excuse to waste our time?
- Building a Family. I want children. I want to be a father. I can’t wait (well, actually, I CAN wait a few years, but I’m excited). I was a weird child who always looked forward to having kids someday. Marriage is another step towards being the patriarch of a family.
- Sex. I’m sure a lot of readers will chuckle at this, given the society that we live in today that promotes lots of random, meaningless sex for fun (thank you, 1960s). But I am looking forward to my wedding night, and the many nights after that where I can connect with my wife on a physical level. We’ve cheapened sex to be a strictly physical act, and yet we all know there is more to it – we’ve just trained ourselves to ignore it. Sex is emotional, it’s mental, and it is spiritual, and not just for women, either. Getting married is a sign to your loved one that you promise you are dedicating your body to that person as well.
- My Last Name. There’s a branch of feminism that all of a sudden became offended at the idea that "you must take the husband’s last name". Women who feel this way are forgetting what the last name means to us men. To me, my last name is part of my identity. It’s not just a part of tradition (cue the Fiddler On The Roof music), it’s something that defines me. I don’t force my last name on my wife – I give it to her as a gift. It’s a sign of love that I am giving something that means so much to me.
- Teamwork. Hand-in-hand with companionship, you are a team with your spouse. You need to have the same goals financially, spiritually, and everything in between. Getting married gives you a teammate – someone who can run the race of life with you and support you while you support her.
Now, this isn’t just a giant love letter to my fiancé to make her cry (because I’m sure she’s choked up reading this at this point), I also want to share with you how to approach your engagement and marriage to do it right and ensure that the two of you will be happy for years to come:
Get yourself on the same page, spiritually.
Don’t do this and you are asking for trouble. It is absolutely number one. Marriage is not a time for changing somebody – you take that person at face value, however they are, the moment you propose. Telling someone you want to marry them is telling them that you want them exactly the way they are, for the rest of your life. Try to raise children in a household where Dad is one religion and Mom doesn’t go to church, or they worship differently, or believe something different, and the kid will be confused and you run a huge risk of the child abandoning God altogether. If you marry someone of a different religion than you, you are sending the message to the family and to the world that there are other things more important to you than your faith. It says it’s okay to compromise your belief system. Take that to heart, please. Is that a message you want to send?
Divorce is not an option.
We live in a society of pathetic cowards. Too harsh? Look at the divorce rate. You need to treat your wedding as more than just a day to party. You need to treat marriage as more than just taking on a roommate. Getting married is a promise to be with that person for the rest of your lives. Period. Our grandparents and great-grandparents didn’t get divorced at nearly the rate we do. Does this mean they were in unhealthy, miserable relationships? Nope. Heck, just look around at the old people that are married to this day. When shopping around for halls for our wedding, Amanda and I went to an old dance hall on a Sunday afternoon and saw old couples dancing together with smiles on their faces as the men held their women’s hands. I bartended a get-together for World War II veterans and watched with a big smile on my face as the elderly couples who could barely walk took to the dance floor to hold each other lovingly and move to the music one more time together. These are people that are bonded together through years of hardship and troubles. They worked through their problems instead of running from them. The result of that is they could never be happier. Of course there are exceptions – an unfaithful spouse deserves to be kicked to the curb. But let’s remove "irreconcilable differences" from our vocabulary and start honoring the vows we’ve made.
Guys, get the blessing from her family (especially the father).
Marrying someone in defiance of the family doesn’t work, so knock it off. It’s not a statement about independence. Two days before I proposed to my fiancé, I sat down with her parents in their living room and asked their permission to marry their daughter. It’s not really about "getting their permission". It’s about showing respect to them. When you get married, you become a part of your spouse’s family. The old cliché is true – you marry your spouse’s family. For the rest of your life, you are part of their family, and they are a part of yours. You may not always do things the way they do things, but respect them regardless. You may butt heads, but show love for them just as you love your own family.
Ignore the mainstream messages about proposing and wedding planning.
Myth #1: You need to spend 3 months’ worth of income on an engagement ring. Fact: Get a ring that you can afford in the style that you know she’ll love. Myth #2: You need to do X, Y, and Z at your wedding and spend $25,000 on it. Fact: It makes no sense to go into heaping amounts of debt for your wedding day. You don’t want to start your marriage on a negative note. Instead, sit down together and prioritize what you want for your wedding (and #1 would be that you are marrying each other), then set a budget and stick to it. If at all possible, pay cash for the wedding and work your butt off to get there. It will make it that much more enjoyable when the day comes.
Live apart before you are married.
"WHAT?!?" Yup. I mean it. If not for the spiritual reasons, think about this: what significance does a wedding hold if the bride and groom are living together already? What kind of step is this? A good friend of mine once told me it was like "Taking her out for a test drive", because you don’t buy a car without testing it out first. With all due respect to him and his wife (who I both love dearly, by the way!), I think this destroys a big part of the romanticism of the marriage. Asking someone to move in together is just telling them that they don’t mean enough to you to marry yet.
Do the honorable thing and go all in or get out. Dating and courtship is about getting to know the other person emotionally and otherwise. Marriage is when you learn to live with them on a daily basis. You may disagree, and that’s fine. But to me, there’s no honor in living together before you are married. I think it’s a wimpy way to go. She’s not a car, she’s a human being. Side note: the more socially-acceptable this step has been, the higher the divorce rate has gotten in this country. Think about that.
Fight before you propose.
The kids who rush into marriage do so before they even know the other person. You can’t just base your relationship on how happy you make each other. You also have to look at how you two handle the hard times. Do you get distant when things get tough, or do you two bond together and work through problems? Do you have to constantly remind your significant other that they need to be there for you when you need them, or do they show up and let you lean on them, no questions asked?
I’ve told Amanda that I knew I loved her when she came to me with a problem she had with me and had an honest, emotional discussion with me about it. I knew I was going to marry her when I came to her with a problem in my life, and she let me lean on her and calmed me down, without asking any questions. Your marriage won’t always be rosy (as evident by the stinking divorce rate), so you need to know that you two can handle adversity together.
Do nothing together.
The other problematic relationships I see are ones where the couple is constantly going out every weekend. Every date they have, they go somewhere new and fun, or they go out with friends. This is fine, but when you get married, you’re not going to get home from work and then go out somewhere every night. There will be lots of nights where you two will literally do nothing together. You need to know that you’re not going to drive each other mad – that you honestly enjoy each other’s company, pure and simple. And yes, you can do this without moving in together. (Side note: you’ll save a little money along the way, too!)
Is it ridiculous that I’m doling out marriage advice six months before I get married? Not really. I give this advice watching four marriages very closely (my parents’ and my three older brothers’), as well as looking at the simple facts of the world that everybody accepts as reality. Marriage and relationships don’t have to be "progressive" – let’s take an old-fashioned stance on them. My fiancé and I, through thick and thin over the last year and a half, are a great couple. You know why? We work at it. We do our due diligence, and we make sure that we do it together. I love her very much, and it takes a true man to admit that publicly. Let’s put some honor back in our relationships. Please.
Your thoughts? Any married people out there who want to argue with this?
Tom is an entrepreneur and freelance writer, working out of his apartment full-time, or wherever he feels like taking his laptop. He doesn't take long European vacations or blogs on the beach. He's an Average Joe that took control of his life. He wants you to do the same.
