Please reach out to your partner if you have any questions.
Let's acknowledge that we live in an extremely status quo society, with emphasis placed on marrying a person with the "right" professional identity. How often have you heard people brag (or brag about themselves) about a partner’s career? “He’s a doctor,” or “She’s a model.” These statements don’t guarantee a good relationship. Unfortunately, you don’t hear people bragging, “He’s a kindergarten teacher” or “She’s an administrative assistant at a not-for-profit organization in the Bronx.” This is part of the problem. When we focus on status, we destroy any chance to live authentically with a partner who shares our values.
Details about where and how you live may seem secondary to weightier matters like love, compatibility, and communication. But over time, small differences in how people feel about “home” can lead to big problems. Home is not just where the heart is; it’s also where your toothbrush lives. How you feel about privacy, clutter, television, and home maintenance can significantly influence your daily life with a partner.
Many couples believe that if they’re in love and committed to each other, the rest will take care of itself. But questions about money will infuse themselves into every area of your life and show up daily. These are a few questions you should not ignore.
The longer you’ve lived, the more likely it is that you’ve had at least one serious relationship. It’s important to take a close look at what you’ve learned from these experiences. Are you capable of creating a mature, committed relationship, or do you carry wounds that are still bleeding? Are you a person who lives in the erase/replace mode as a viable option when difficulties arise?
Sexuality is one of the most tender, beautiful, and sacred areas in a committed, intimate partnership. Yet it is also one of the most wounded areas for many individuals. Exploring your values and expectations about sex before marriage can prevent years of disappointment, confusion, and heartbreak.
When you seek information about your partner's health history and practices, you are asking, “Are you going to be there for the long haul?” and “Are you committed to being whole and well for yourself and for me?” Many couples don’t pay much attention to health questions until they have children or until one of them gets sick. But the issues that arise around health are primarily matters of whether you live from your wounds or a place of wellness.
We live in a culture that tells us our worth is tied to how we look. That message doesn’t disappear just because you get married. What happens when the person you love begins to lose their looks? Trust easily breaks down when one person in a relationship is set up to feel judged or unworthy. Arguments about weight or age are allowed to grow out of proportion to shared values.
In addition to being the foundation for marriage and intimate partnership, having children is also for grown-ups, and there are all too many “adult” couples bringing children into marriages where the foundation is shaky on a good day. Being a mature adult involves recognizing that much of what you recreate in your marriage and as parents has to do with unresolved issues with your root families.
When we were children, our friends were our first experience in forging our independent identities outside the family system. As adults, friends are people we choose. They reflect our values, our interests, our capacity for intimacy. Good friendships are nonthreatening; we have permission to be honest without fear of losing the relationship. Healthy friendships are a gift.
Few people I know love animals the way I do, and I accept this fully. But I draw the line at cruelty or indifference. For me, the treatment of what the Bible calls “the least of these” includes animals and children, people who live in poverty and with illness, the exhausted waiter in a restaurant or the mentally challenged young people I work with at a group home.
Years ago, I was involved with a man who was not only judgmental toward homeless people but also unkind to my dog. He stepped on one of her front paws, causing her to yelp as he injured her. Instead of showing remorse or even concern, he would blame her for being in the way. My dog liked him and followed him around, often sticking close by his side. This was not because he loved her — it was because he didn’t like her. His lack of kindness toward her destroyed my trust in the relationship.
Not only was he unable to show remorse when he caused injury, but he also lacked the softness and joyful spirit that a good marriage requires. That lack of empathy would have had a major impact on our ability to create the kind of intimacy I needed to feel safe with him. And it seriously hampered my ability to feel safe around him, including myself. Respecting all creatures doesn’t mean you must love pets in particular, but he had to value what I valued. My dog was a valued treasure to me, and he had to be cared for when he was hurt. That lack of caring made the relationship unsustainable.
Even intimate partners can have very different attitudes about social action, human rights, the role that faith plays in assuring justice for all people, and gender ideals. People often trivialize politics into party affiliation, but it’s more fundamental. It’s the way you view the world and your place in it. It also includes other categories of questions shown below: community, charity, the military, the law, and the media.
Like politics, religion cannot be reduced to affiliation. That’s especially true today when many people consider themselves spiritual but not religious. When I was growing up, most people in my community belonged to a particular church. Some practiced regularly. Others attended only for major holidays. Some abandoned religion altogether. But because these were not dogmatic people, they eventually found a way to give their children a spiritual heritage — even if it looked different than the one they had received.
If you and your partner have different religious traditions or levels of commitment, it’s essential to talk these differences through early and with mutual respect. There’s no shame in having a religious heritage, but not every couple will find that possible. Still, it’s important to approach the topic with openness and curiosity.
We cannot escape popular culture. It is all around us, and its influence is as pervasive as the air we breathe. Sometimes it elevates and enriches us. Other times it depresses us to the point that we question our assumptions about human intelligence and the soul.
Individual preferences play a big part in our attitudes about culture, and partners can live happily with different preferences. I know a woman who takes weekly tango lessons with friends while her husband attends art movies. They're content with their separate interests. On the other hand, I've known people whose obsessions with popular culture became an alienating factor in their relationships. Personal obsessions always create barriers to intimacy. These considerations also involve attitudes and behaviors around leisure time.
How driven are you to look good in the eyes of others? Are you your barometer, or do you weigh everything against what your family, friends, cultural icons, or Hollywood movie stars are doing? How much of your life is rooted in what you value, and where are your values coming from?
I’ve seen marriages break up over the inability to reach consensus when one person is social and the other is not. Seemingly frivolous issues have deeper roots related to how we see ourselves in the world, what we take in, what we give, and our sense of ourselves as acceptable and cherished by others.
It can be true that a person who needs frequent social engagements is looking for constant confirmation of being okay in the eyes of the world. Conversely, a person who is overly resistant to social engagements usually has a fear of being rejected. Social style is deeply rooted. Social people get their energy from others; introverts refuel in solitude.
The same distinctions are also true of differing ideas about celebrating holidays or special occasions and planning vacations. In a grown-up relationship, there will be a collaboration to create something that is, while not perfect, at least acceptable and respectful to both partners.
This is where you practice sharing power, which means respecting that your partner is not the same person as you and has a different way of finding joy and pleasure. When I hear someone say about her partner, “I won’t go to a movie because I don’t like action films,” or “I don’t like chick flicks,” my response is always the same: “So what? This isn’t about what type of movie you like, it’s about whether or not you want to be generous in your relationship.”
When we take the position that we won’t do things because they aren’t what we enjoy, we’ve just said, “This relationship is all about me.” That narrows the path on which intimacy travels. The truth about good marriages: People do things that don’t particularly float their boat because it’s good for the relationship. This is called maturity, and it leads to healthy, happy intimacy.
Education is the sleeping dog in many relationships. Our attitudes are so deeply ingrained that we may not even realize we have them. Yet differences in education level and the amount of importance given to continuing education arise when there are other power struggles in the relationship. Openness to learning can be a clue about your partner’s openness in other areas.
We live in a society where cars are symbols of identity and independence. For many people, they are an important way to claim personal space in the world. Others view their cars as a necessary evil. Which are you? Who is your partner?
Please reach out to your partner if you have any questions.
I somehow doubt that before the invention of the telephone, people felt threatened or annoyed because their partners were “always writing letters.” Today, with the explosion of phones, email, texting, and digital communication, it can feel like your partner is always “with” someone else. This can rightfully cause conflict in relationships, especially when your partner believes that a ringing phone takes precedence over the living being right in front of them.
You would think that people who love each other would have figured out a way to eat together. But questions around when we eat, where we eat, the quality of food, and who prepares it are much, much more than that. And if you can’t agree on all of the above, are you deaf to each other or just indifferent?
We strive for equality in our relationships, but we carry within us the powerful influences of childhood, which is where we learned to model gender roles. Sometimes our assumptions about who does what are so buried that we don’t know we have them until they start getting acted out. The challenge for couples today is to divest themselves of models that don’t work and invest in models that reflect their beliefs and commitment. Gender stereotypes are so ingrained by society, family, religion, and the media that intentionally challenging false role ideals is one of the most important gifts you can give yourself and your partner.
America is still living a separate, unequal existence as it relates to race and ethnicity, but we have chosen to hit the snooze button on the impact this has on us as a nation. It is extremely important to explore how this blind spot can show up in marriage as an unexpected source of pain.
As the saying goes, life happens when you’re busy doing other things. Marriages are made or broken through daily interactions. These are small questions with a big impact.
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