Before We Got Married
Brandon and I will soon be coming up on 9 years of marriage. In some ways feels like we just got married 2 years ago and in others it feels like we have been married a lifetime already. It is so crazy how time can seem to fly by and crawl simultaneously. Many nights before bed we chat about growing old together and how excited we are to still be holding hands at 92 years old, God Willing! We pray that we both get to see that day and never take any moment of it for granted.
Each morning we take time to be thankful for our marriage and each other. And some mornings we get a good laugh thinking about the Engaged Encounter Retreat we attended before we exchanged our vows. It truly and deeply prepared our minds, bodies and souls for married life. But we laugh because the retreat was both incredibly amazing while at the same time very challenging. We found ourselves laughing + crying together during the three day encounter. We walked away knowing each other’s truest self. We bared our souls, opened our minds, got our expectations in check and above all fell even more in love.
This was one of last year’s anniversary photos!
Today we wanted to share 10 of the hardest marriage questions we had to face on the Engaged Encounter Retreat. These marriage questions made our bond stronger, deeper and Truer.
To answer these questions we had to split up and answer them individually first. Then we came back together to share our answers with each other. However, while one of us shared our answer to a question, the other could not interrupt or try to counter the other. We had to accept the way the other felt. Then after we both shared all of our answers, we went back and celebrated all the answers which were on the same wave length. We were blessed to agree on several. Lastly we talked about the questions we had different answers for with the goal of working together to have a plan of action when it came to those issues.
10 Marriage Questions
- What do I expect from married life?
- What will be my roll in our marriage and what will be my future spouses roll in our marriage?
- Are we both open to having children? How many children?
- How do I solve problems? Do we both solve problems the same way and if not what plan of action do we have in the future for solving problems together?
- What behaviors or habits in my future spouse sometimes annoy me?
- Am I concerned that my parents or my future spouse’s parents may interfere in our marriage relationship?
- Do we or can we talk candidly about our sexual intimacy in marriage?
- How will we share specific responsibilities in managing our finances?
- Have I ever felt that this may not be the right person for me to marry?
- Have we talked about our sacramental marriage commitment to each other under all circumstances? If not what does that look like?
These questions allowed us to celebrate our relationship strengths and to talk to each other about topics that needed attention. We went into the questions with the positive attitude of “I am marrying by best friend, the person I can talk to about anything”. I thought in my mind (before we shared our answers), “I will not judge his answers. I will be supportive. I will have patience. I will be kind and I will love”. Later Brandon shared with me that he too whispered something in the back of his mind before we shared. It was, “I will love her, fight for her, support her and lead her closer to Christ”.
It is this positive attitude we carry with us. We even have to remind ourselves of these marriage questions at times.
#MARRIAGEROCKS!!
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