Have you ever been on a date and had a conversation like this?
A: "Tell me. What's important to you in life?"
B: "Well, family is important."
A: "Yes, that's important for me too."
B: "And work. That's important because I want to have a financial freedom."
A: "Yes, yes. I agree. Those are important to me too!"
After this, you would think that you and your partner have so much in common, wouldn't you?
There are five top priorities that are most often mentioned: family, career, financial stability, physical health and spiritual health. When the topic of priorities comes up in one of your conversations, you both most likely agree that all five of these priorities are the priorities in your life. However, what you probably haven't talked about would be the order to which these priorities are set in each of your lives.
In a marriage, the most talked about issue would be the distribution of time. The husband would work hard to advance his career so that he could bring his family to financial stability. The wife would complain because he wasn't at home often enough to actually spend time with the family. She'd say that she "thought family was important to you!" And then they'd get into a heated argument.
They've talked about how family was important for the both of them. But they didn't talk about the order of those priorities. So, while the husband think that priority is important, family might still come after work. Career advancement would be at the top of his life. Financial stability might come in second.
To work for the family and to put the family at the top of the list is two different things. To have priorities and a system for priorities are also two different things. You both can have the same list of priorities, but when you place each of them in different order of importance, that's when you'll breed grounds for misunderstanding. Conflicts don't occur because of the similarities in your priorities, but because of the differences in the importance you place on each of them.
As you are preparing yourself for marriage, it is important to lay all your priorities out in the open. Be transparent and open with each other. Talk about which priorities you want to place importance on together, as a team. Because in doing so, you will be saving yourselves from a lot of potential conflicts.
