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"Dear Heart-to-Heart, in a few months time I will be marrying my wonderful fiancé. I look forward to my marriage and feel in my heart that it will be a great new journey for us both. However, I do wonder about how difficult marriage will be. I grew up learning from many married couples that marriage is very hard. One person even went as far as saying how being married can make you feel like you are in jail – stuck and unhappy. Yikes! Although I have an overall positive outlook on marriage, these statements I grew up with are now haunting me a little bit. Is marriage really going to be that difficult? Thanks for your advice!" - Cold Feet Fiance
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Dear Cold Feet Fiance,
First of all, thank you for your question and congratulations on your upcoming wedding. We hope you both have fun!
When you are about to embark on a new chapter in your life and feel a lot of excitement for it, it is never easy to hear people's negative remarks. It is also a shame that you grew up around married couples that seem to only communicate the difficult sides of marriage rather than including the good. Certainly, for any relationships to prosper, to be long lasting as well as full of happiness, it requires work and effort. Now, when we hear those two words – we assume that marriage will then be a drag, tiring and even unpleasant. So, let's elaborate on what "putting work and effort" actually means.
Work, in the case of marriage, refers to your and your partner's willingness to work through any misunderstandings, communication barriers, issues and other challenges that life brings us. Work, in this case, means you do not give up when time gets rough; instead you work together to make things better than before.
Effort, in this case, refers to your willingness to invest your time and attention towards your partner and the relationship. Effort means you invest in making sure you meet your partner's needs (emotional, physical, mental), keeping the sparks alive by having date nights, complimenting your partner, planning surprises for one another, etc. That is what it means to put in work and effort into your marriage.
When we begin to see the work and effort simply as our willingness to do whatever it takes to make sure our partner knows just how much we love them, they will no longer feel like a "chore" or something we "have to do".
Love is about putting in our time, energy and attention towards our partner's happiness in any way that we can. So, as long as you focus on that –everything else should come naturally and could even feel effortless. Keep your excitement going and enjoy every step of this new journey! At the end of the day, it is your marriage you are going to experience and what other couples are going through should just be used as learning lessons.
