The marriage definition most of us use is “the state of being a married couple voluntarily joined for life”, but that is not going to help your marriage. If you’ve been having trouble with your relationship with your spouse, or even if you haven’t, you may need to come up with your own marriage definition.
In modern America, more than half of all marriages end in divorce. This means that the odds are stacked against you from the start. People attribute the failure of their marriage to many things, from infidelity to problems with money, but the truth is, there’s usually one cause for most divorces: lack of communication.
The problem is that people have different expectations of what they want and can get out of their marriage. While this may be a small problem in the beginning of a marriage, it can rapidly snowball until too much damage has been done for the marriage to be repaired. What you need to do, as early as possible, is create your own marriage definition.
A marriage definition is a concrete, agreed upon set of expectations and limitations. When you do this, you make sure that your spouse and you have the same ideas about what your relationship is supposed to be. Without this, it’s entirely possible that you and your spouse’s definitions are going to be different enough to cause problems.
For example, the marriage definition you use might be that you spend every moment together. Your spouse might have the idea that because you’re married that you have a bond that does require you to see each other constantly. If you’re working off different expectations, you’re going to be setting yourself up for heartache.
It’s natural for us to assume that other people think like we do; it’s even more natural to think that your spouse, your heart and soul, the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with, will automatically understand us.
The fact is, unless you’re very, very lucky, being in synch like that is not something that just happens. It’s something you have to work at, and that’s why you have to take the earliest possible time and set down with your partner and talk about exactly what you want. What you need to do is create a new marriage definition.
This is not necessarily going to be an easy thing to do. Most of us don’t like to have these kinds of conversations, but it’s something you really need to do. Even if your spouse, or soon to be spouse, is reluctant, sit them down and have the conversation. You need to know exactly what each of you thinks about and wants from your relationship.
What you’re trying to do here is come to an agreement. You need to know ahead of time what you both want and what compromises you’re willing to make and need to make to have a successful relationship.
The best thing you can do is to create a new marriage definition for yourselves. This is the way to find the kind of marriage that will keep you together forever. If you need help working through the process, there are lots of resources available to help create the marriage of your dreams.