The Advice We Don’t Think We Need Before Marriage
A number of years ago, my wife and I were leading a “Pre-Marital” class in which we were providing great information about the joys and challenges that many young couples face during their first months and years of marriage.
At the end of the last session, I suggested to the couples that they should take everything that they had learned, all of the notes they had taken, all of the handouts that they had received . . . . and put them in a drawer. Because right now, they were convinced NONE of these issues would affect them.
After six months of marriage, I told them they would need to pull their notes from this drawer, and begin to address the issues that we had discussed during the class. Only then would they begin to understand that to truly experience the intimacy of a fulfilled marriage, they would eventually want to resolve these topics that were being introduced.
Why are the First Three Years of Marriage Often a Surprise ?