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Marriage Memo

Five Things I Wish I’d Known Before Marriage

Dave Boehi

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what couples should know before they get married. For one thing, I’ve been making some updates and revisions on FamilyLife’s Preparing for Marriage workbook, which is used by thousands of pastors and counselors around the country each year for premarriage counseling. In addition, my younger daughter, Missy, was married recently.   As a parent you think of all the things you should tell a child before marriage, and nothing ever seems to be enough. 

When Merry and I were preparing to be married, we went through counseling and got a lot of good advice. But there are some important things that we did not fully understand. So if I were talking with a premarried couple, here’s what I’d tell them about the “Five Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Was Married”:

#1: Marriage is not all about you. It’s not about your happiness and self-fulfillment. It’s not about getting your needs met. It’s about going through life together and serving God together and serving each other. It’s about establishing a family. It’s about committing your lives to each other even though you may be very different in 10, 20, or 40 years from the people you are now.

#2: You are about to learn a painful lesson—you are both very selfish people. This may be difficult to comprehend during the happy and hazy days of courtship, but it’s true, and it shocks many couples during their first years of marriage. It’s important to know this revelation of selfishness is coming, because then you can make adjustments for it, and you will be a lot better off.

#3: The person you love the most is also the person who can hurt you the deepest. That’s the risk and pain of marriage. And the beauty of marriage is working through your hurt and pain and resolving your conflicts and solving your problems.

#4: You can’t make it work on your own. It’s obvious that marriage is difficult—just look at how many couples today end in divorce. This is why it’s so critical to center your lives and your marriage on the God who created marriage. To make your marriage last for a lifetime, you need to rely on God for the power and love and strength and wisdom and endurance you need.

#5: Never stop enjoying each other. Always remember that marriage is an incredible gift to be enjoyed. Ecclesiastes 9:9 says, “Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.”

Enjoy the little things of life with your spouse: the food you enjoy together at home or in restaurants … the movies you like … the little inside jokes nobody else understands except for you … the times you make each other laugh … the games you play together.

And focus on making memories together: Plan special dates and weekend getaways. Make sure you reserve time for each other after you have kids. When you are old, you won’t look back and remember how great it was to buy that new furniture or watch that great show on television. You’re going to remember what you did together and saw together and created together.

How about you? If you were talking to an engaged couple about what you wish you’d known before marriage, what would you say? Write down your thoughts in the comments section below.

Related resources
Getting Away to Get It Together, by Bill and Carolyn Wellons
"Living and Loving Your Roles in Marriage" FamilyLife Today broadcast featuring Paul Sheppard
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

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Anonymous @ 11/20/2009 10:14:17 AM 
I would also add this: God placed the two of you together as a spirital leader of the household and a helpmate. It is our jobs in the relationship to put God first and spouse 2nd. If I keep my eyes focused on what God wants me to do in my role in the relationship then I cannot point fingers at what my spouse is/is not doing. God first and He'll bring the rest into line.
Anonymous @ 11/19/2009 11:05:39 AM 
We went to counseling but none of these issues were brought up. I wish I had known to question his character more closely, but when you are being deceived and they are romancing you and telling you they want to spend the rest of their life with you, you are only thinking about the now and the attention they are showing you then. It will change. They won't persue you anymore. Most men can't commit to just one woman. It has to be many women. So better be prepared to have your heart broken if you marry a man.

Has he viewed much porn or addictied to it? This is becoming the major thing taking down marriages.
Was he promiscuous? He is more likely to cheat on you.
Does he flirt and what is his reaction to other women who flirt with him?
Has he lied little lies while dating? he will become a habitual liar.
Is he a fake christian. He will never own up or confess.
Anonymous @ 11/18/2009 9:41:01 PM 
Although there are far more details, these five points summarize it pretty well. My husband and I have been married for almost 19 years and it is only by the grace of God that we are married. We did not have the benefit of premarital counseling, but found these things out along the way. We must be meant for each other because through all the squabbles, major and minor, God has kept us together. Our youngest child was just diagnosed with mild to moderate Autism, and I know that God will use this experience to draw us closer to Him, and thus closer together!
Anonymous @ 11/18/2009 9:23:56 PM 
I would tell them to pay attention to any red flags. If there are areas that you find questionable or unbecoming, don't dismiss and ignore them. Those things will become even more pronounced after being married and living under one roof. I wish I had paid more attention to the things that bothered me rather than sweeping them under the rug.
I would also tell them that sometimes the things you find attractive in or about that person can become the things you dislike the most down the road. So think about the things you like and then think about them in the most annoying and frustratin way possible and decide if you can deal with it.
Anonymous @ 11/17/2009 7:18:52 AM 
I agree with this post wholeheartedly. Those five key elements should not be forgotten even after you've been married for several years because I think we tend to forget them along the way even if we've known them before. I personally, did not know them or wasn't aware of them all when I married, even the second time around, I wasn't a believer the first or second time I got married, but through the Grace of God, He got a hold of me and my second husband and spoke to us and is still showing us these five points to remember. My advice for any one who is single and contemplating marriage: please pray for God to give you wisdom if it is His will for you to marry that person. Even if you are a single parent and you want to marry the child's biological parent, please don't use that as an excuse to marry and continue to ask for the leading of the Holy Spirit in all decisions, especially marriage. It is God's will for people to marry and He did give us free will, but He also gave us the
Anonymous @ 11/14/2009 9:18:45 AM 

If you have someone else in the back of your mind besides the one you are about to marry, someone that you KNOW is your true love; however distant, however impossible it seems, that person was meant for you. Don't marry one that you don't know you were meant to be with. I made that mistake, and now after over a decade of marriage I am dealing with 32 yrs of a soulmates love that has haunted me and I cannot deny.
Anonymous @ 11/13/2009 1:09:33 PM 
The only other thing I would add to this list of things is make sure you are best friends. I know in the headiness of courtship you overlook the value of friendship, but it is truly one of the most important qualities in a good marriage (other than God, of course). You are not going to like ALL of the same things or be exactly alike, but deep friendship is the glue that holds you through the tough times.

The only other thing I can think of is don't forget to have the right priorities, God first,then spouse, THEN children. Too many people put their kids before their spouse and only end up hurting their kids by divorcing.
Anonymous @ 11/12/2009 10:13:37 AM 
I wish I had really known him before we got married. They say date at least 90 days before getting married, well I didn't follow this and I wish I had. I would've been able to see more of who he was because it's so easy for all of us to put on an act of who we think the other person wants us to be. I wish I had really seen how he treated his mother and other woman in his life before I said, "I do." Because, it is a tell tale sign of how you will eventually be treated, I guarantee it.
Another thing, is that it would be ideal if we all could learn to love ourselves more before we got into a relationship. It seems possible that some of us may get into a relationship (unhealthy relationship) because we're looking for love. We look past the little details of that person, because we just want to be loved. It won't work out well if you don't love yourself first!
Lastly, you can't love a person enough to change them. Like the person above said, we all have our free-will. Yes, God ca
Anonymous @ 11/11/2009 9:04:23 PM 
It is all so sad. There is nothing worse then the feeling you're are trapped. That is what happens when you are in a bad marriage. The word marriage is even foreign sounding to me. I don't think I have ever felt married except financially. I have a better relationship with the Lord, than with my husband. What I would tell a pre-married couple would be to make sure you know each other very well, not sexually, but likes and dislikes. Think about the character traits that really bug you about him/her and ask yourself if you could tolerate them for the rest of your life. If you cannot, don't marry that person because those traits can seem worse when times are the toughest. Sometimes even impossible to bear. One very important thing to remember as well, opposites may attract, but rarely ever last. My husband and I are polar opposites. If I had to do it all over again, I would seek the Lord's choice for a husband. As you can see (or I have learned), that doing something without
Anonymous @ 11/11/2009 10:44:10 AM 
Don't ever say anything to your spouse in public that you have to follow with "just kidding," whether you are joking or not. This seems so silly, but was the greatest advice we ever received. Your spouse should be the one person that you can turn to when the world has turned against you, but if that person would say something like that in public (or private), that security/respect is removed!

In our six years of marriage, we have endured cancer, epilepsy, a lost child, a lost adoption, brain surgery, a lost grandparent, divorces throughout the family, etc. There is not another person that I would rather walk with, through all of this, than him. That mutual respect (and obviously focused time with the Lord) has carried us so far!! Praise the Lord!
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