Being engaged to be married can bring new perspectives into your life. You start thinking about your prospective new role as a wife/husband, with all the attendant issues that go with it. Thoughts of becoming a parent, with babies, flit through your mind. Surely I’m not ready for that yet, you think! After all, you have only just decided to get married!
But then you start to look at mothers pushing buggies down the road. You realise that soon this could be you and a whole new chapter in your life.
You now start to do things as ‘an item’ and mix more with recently engaged or married friends. Conversation often seems to now focus on being pregnant; husbands bottle-feeding, and getting up to do the 5am feed! You sit back thinking you are still just an observer listener in this conversation. But, in no time at all, you will be an earnest contributor to the conversation on married life.
Setting up your first home together and caring for each other with the many other responsibilities that come with marriage, is a magical time, but adjustments will be necessary as you settle into being a couple.
Before, you may have relied on your mum to do your washing and leave it neatly pressed in your room. Now this task becomes a responsibility to share with your partner. And when you come home from work, tired from the journey, there may not be a meal ready for you on the table, because you now live in your own home.
Up to now you will have seen each other at your best (and always with make-up or aftershave), but now you need to be prepared to see another side of your partner.
Quick Tips:
- Trying to keep everything in perspective is quite normal as you move from being two singletons to one doubleton.
- Take it one step at a time. Anticipate changes to your lifestyle and deal with them one at a time; don’t rush.
- Hold your horses! Slow down and enjoy this next chapter of your life before thinking about the next.
- Keep on seeing your single friends and do not isolate yourself just because you have a new home. But be aware that a resolutely independent lifestyle doesn’t help the bonding process between partners that is necessary to establish the strong foundations necessary for a good marriage.
- Remember that you need to spend time together in order to maintain a permanent relationship.
Article by Carole Spiers, Love and Relationship Expert
Image from Flickr by LyndaSanchez (CC BY-SA 2.0 License)