Know Yourself First
There are 8 essential qualities we can attain and measure to help prepare us for marriage.
The qualities are commitment, loyalty, acceptance, patience, trust, honesty, forgiveness, and communication.
Measuring these qualities is a great way to start in becoming more self-aware of which qualities we need to work on and improve.
We can start by asking ourselves some of the following questions:
How many things have I been committed to long-term in my life? How loyal am I to the people around me?
Am I accepting of my friends for who they are? Or am I quick to judge? How often do I get angry? Am I good at maintaining my temper?
Do I trust the people around me? Or do I often doubt others? Am I honest in my communication? Or do I like to beat around the bush and play games?
Do I forget and forgive others quickly? Or do I hold grudges? Do others have an easy time or a hard time understanding me?
Self-awareness is key; feel free to ask your friends if you’re having a hard time answering these questions.
Becoming prepared for marriage also requires us to be fully independent on our own so we can be successfully interdependent within the marriage relationship we are to hold in the future.
We all have the same human needs (physical, emotional, and spiritual) we need to fulfill, though fulfilling these needs can be done differently for different people.
When we are trying to fulfill our needs, do we look internally or externally? Are we placing our own happiness in the hands of others, or is our happiness completely within our control?
Are we expecting others to satisfy our needs, or are we responsible enough to satisfy our own needs?
Are we expecting others to care for us and love us, or are we caring for and loving ourselves to begin with?
These are important questions to ask ourselves to understand which category we fall under: dependency or independency? Because interdependency in a relationship can only be achieved when we are fully independent.
Otherwise, codependency as a result of dependency will make our marriage relationship unhealthy and hold it back.
We also need to become more self-aware of the mindset we hold, as we often look for a temporary fix to our issues, needs, desires, and emotions instead of a long-term, permanent one.
Last but not least, when we look for a partner, we all have desired qualities, values, principles, attitudes, and mindsets that we look for in others.
The real question here is: Do we have/hold the same desired qualities, values, principles, attitudes, and mindsets that we look for and expect to see in our future partner?
We attract who we are, not what we desire.
Not to forget, what we desire may go against our own values. So we must first understand our own values clearly and then compare them closely to what we desire in a partner for compatibility purposes.
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