The Love Lessons Your Children Need to Hear Before Getting Married

Recently in the Townsend household, we are preparing two weddings for our third and fourth sons. Love is in the air, and the yearning of these engaged couples is palpable. As someone who has spent my professional career giving relationship advice, it’s been interesting for me to see what advice I’d give my kids who are entering into their own life-long commitments.

Your Spouse Is Your Most Important Person

Their partner isn’t their friend, sibling, boss, or teacher. They are their “Go-to” person! Before marriage, it used to be your friends, family, coaches, and favorite professional athletes; now it’s your spouse. In a healthy interdependent relationship, your spouse can become even more important than yourself. The fastest way to lose your spouse is to have children unless, of course, you put each other first. Because spouses are #1, that means Moms and Dads aren’t! Parents need to stay out of the way, and in conflict, we need to turn our kids back to their spouses to reconcile. In Healthy Relationships spouses can be your #1 Person, Place, and Thing: Person - your spouse is the person you share everything with emotionally. Place - Next to your spouse is the place you most want to be. Thing - Your relationship, trust, and respect are the things you value and appreciate most in the world. You and your spouse are the newest family unit in the world. The creation of a newly married couple is the creation of a new family unit, the foundation of society.

Marriage Doubles the Amount of People Rooting for Your Success

Every human being needs to know deep down that they belong to a “field of Love” or tribe of people that love them unconditionally. When we get married, our tribe doubles. The tribe is made up of both sides of the family with varying skills, talents, gifts, traits, strengths, and weaknesses that can all be used to further and magnify their mission. They need to know that as a tribe, we are here to support and lift, not divide, and separate. As a tribe, we will celebrate all your victories and will be there to help clean you both up when life knocks you down. Our children, when they get married, need to know that all the people coming to the celebratory events are there to make sure their marriage succeeds. It means that as families, we will support each other through the good and bad times. We will succeed and fail together, but no matter what, we belong.

Growth and Improvement Are Voluntary

1. Edwards Deming Quote: “Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. If learning and improvement are voluntary, the sooner you submit and volunteer the better your life gets. People don’t grow emotionally closer, physically closer, socially closer, and spiritually stronger with the passing of time. The only thing that grows with time are the odds of your death. Changing yourself is so much easier than changing another, so instead of focusing your attention on getting them to voluntarily change. Work on yourself to make the change so appealing they are excited and attracted to make their own change. Whenever you notice your partner is not willing to grow or improve, then assume you need to grow more understanding, insight about them, and caring toward them to help them to “want” to grow with you. If growth is voluntary, then wake up every day choosing to grow and improve your relationships with your partner. Don’t assume you know what the change must be. See improving your understanding, deepening your character.

Life is Hard and They Can Handle It

Before they get married, they need to be taught that life is hard. It’s supposed to be difficult; if it were easy, we wouldn’t appreciate it. Even though there should be no surprises about how hard marriage is, make sure you tell them beforehand and reinforce that they can handle it. They also need to know that they can do hard things. Help them see the various things they’ve already done that were hard. The things that they have accomplished that, in the beginning, never seemed possible. Be honest and clear that their marriage will be hard; raising children will be difficult, that employment and financial concerns are real and scary. Tell them stories about what you feared. Reinforce your confidence that you know that they can do it and that their “Tribe” will be there to help them through it.

Love is Forged, Not Found

One of the greatest blessings I think we can leave our children is the true cold facts that the “Western Worlds” notion of love and romantic love are not real. Love is not something that is simply found by locating the right person; a healthier view is that the love is “forged” through the heat of a blacksmith’s cauldron. It’s molded and shaped with the hammering, bending, lots of heat, some sparks, and a cold bath (quenching) to cool us off when we get too hot. Love is a work in progress. Marriage is not just an awesome event with beautiful flowers and princesses. It’s not a honeymoon; it’s not all the presents and goods. It’s really the beginning of a lifetime process of refining and conditioning. By letting your children know that love isn’t just a romantic feeling that is found in another, you’re inherently telling them that it must be worked at, stressed, and heated up until it becomes something powerfully useful and bonded.