Marriage Advice to the Newly Engaged
By Mary G. Holland
March 30, 2015
A few years ago I received a wedding shower invitation that included a request to give marriage advice to the newly engaged young couple. Here’s what I wrote, with a few edits. Readers, please add your own advice as comments!
1. You won’t know who you have married, and how you really feel about your partner and relationship, until you face some extraordinarily tough situations that test your commitment to each other. How you each behave during these challenges will determine whether the experience deepens and strengthens your confidence in the relationship, or whether it weakens it.
2. Separate emotion from behavior. Emotion is a personal feeling, a response to an experience, it just happens, it can’t be rationalized, it just is. No one can make us feel anything, it just happens (or not.)
Others are not responsible for our emotions. We experience emotions as we do because of our upbringing, life experiences, beliefs, filtered perceptions, and related feelings as we encounter a situation.
We choose, however, our behavior in response to our emotions, even when that choice takes a fraction of a second, even when it’s reactionary rather than conscious. Behavior impacts situations and other people. We respond to each other based on our behaviors.
If we feel something but don’t tell the other person, don’t show them through our behavior, how will they know? Or, if we behave in a way which does not authentically reflect our emotion, how will they know?
When we take responsibility for the behavior that we express in response to situations, we take the first step towards conflict resolution.
3. If you have caused harm, learn to apologize, sincerely, repeatedly if necessary, until the offended person has had ample opportunity to get past their own emotions enough to hear it.
Accept responsibility for your behavior and offenses, but don’t apologize if you aren’t at fault. That invites abuse.
Learn to gracefully accept an offered apology with an open heart.
4. You can’t change others. They are who they are. You can only work on yourself, express honestly how you feel, what you believe, and support each other as you strive to adapt to each other’s needs.
5. Let the goals of unwavering honor, commitment, kindness, and respect that you have for your closest friend, drive your behavior towards each other as you face the challenges in life that lie ahead.
Love has many forms, wildly ranging from an all-consuming, giddy, timeless bliss, to a spiritual state of Unity and Divine Grace, to a twisted and confused tangle of emotions.
It’s natural for your loving emotions to vary over time, and be unequal to your partner’s feelings at any given moment. Much joy comes with love, but much pain is also inflicted in daily living, wittingly or not, in the infinitely varying, sometimes twisted forms of love. Love’s joyful emotions are the icing on the cake, the oil to the relationship, but not a reliable motivator or justification of behavior, especially when times are tough.
In contrast, ideals of respect, honor, and thoughtful loving kindness, are clear and well
understood across cultures, ages, education levels, even throughout Nature, across species. These inspire a code of conduct that is recognizable even when feeling angry, hurt, sad, frustrated, betrayed, or neglected. On this foundation, in an environment of honor and respect, you can survive the toughest situations, and joyful love can emerge, thrive, revive from death throes, and rise to its highest level.
Rely on these, not love’s emotions, and consider what behaviors will support continued mutual honor and respect, when you get into difficult situations.
6. Continue throughout life to be conscious of, and express, how you are feeling, through your daily choices. Always seek the path that brings joy, and heaven will find its way to you on earth.
