Friendship In Marriage

I believe that it is one of the most important things to have your spouse be you best friend. This is important because when hard times come, and they will, you will be able to go to your best friend and discuss what is going on. This helps with when you need to strengthen your marriage, you will have the ability to go beyond just asking "How was your day?", you can really have deep discussions.

Ever since I was a little girl and I saw my parents relationship and heard my mother call my dad her best friend, I wanted that. I decided that day that I would be friends with my husband, and that he would be my best friend. This does not necessarily mean that we will be best friends before we get married, but I want to be really good friends. This way I know that I can trust my husband and he knows that he can trust me. I want to be able to tell him something and know that he will keep it to himself. This will really help when we fight or get into arguments, because I know that we will be able to talk to each other and over come our problems.

It is also important to not just have a good friendship before marriage, but to work on it all the time. This means that there need to be times where just "mom and dad" get time alone. This could be done everyday by just talking to each other. Have a specific time where just husband and wife can be alone. Since I am a very active person I think that it would be fun to do like my parents do, either exercise together or just take a walk together. I also like what my parents did with dates. They had a date night, Friday night, where they would go and do something that they wanted. Either dinner, a movie, even sometimes they would take a weekend off and spend a weekend together without kids. I find that this really strengthened their relationship and helped to make sure that they would know what was going on in each others life.

My mother also tried to have the house clean when my father came home that way the could just sit and talk. They would go and talk for about and hour when my father first got home. This is when the kids would take over dinner or anything that mom was doing, so dad and her could have their alone time. I really like this idea of just spending an hour right after work just to talk to each other. Along with this is the concept of "5 magic hours" meaning these five hours can help to strengthen relationships. This could be while making dinner, on a walk, and just talking to each other. It is really important to communicate with one another. That is the KEY to marriage, COMMUNICATION!!! You need to be open and not only just be able to talk, but to listen.

Last week I had an experience where I was talking to someone, and they told me that they feel bad when they talk so much around me. I told them that it was ok, because I preferred to listen instead of talk, and they corrected me and said that I also like to tell stories. I think this is the key, one person can not do all the talking or listening. It needs to be a two way thing, both people need to not only talk, but listen also. So that is important during these five magic hours. Make sure that each person gets a chance to talk, and listen. This will help to build that friendship that I was talking about that my parents have. They both learned to not only talk, but to also listen.

Husband and Wife vs. Living Together

In a marriage I believe that it is an equal and a shared responsiblity between both the man and the woman. There is not one that walks infront of the other, but that they walk side by side, together. I do believe that there are certain rights that each has, but all in all they are one and should make decisions together. For example the father's job is to provide, preside, and protect, while the mother's is to nurture. This may seem unfair, but the thought of raising children or haveing to work outside the home are both full time jobs. They both are equally resposible and they both are just as important as the other. They can not have one without the other. The best way to put it is in an example of a canoe, there are two people working together side by side, yet someone needs to take charge and be the one that will be the leader. The one that will stear the canoe. You can not have both people stearing, or else it will not go anywhere. The canoe will end up sitting in one place. Someone needs to take charge, yet they both have to work together toward a common goal. They first have to decide where they are going to end up going, they do this together, and then second they need to decide who will be the one that leads.

When in a relationship where the couple is just living together and there is no marriage involved, this could lead to some potential pain further down the road. As a couple living together they do not have to worry about divorce, yet they might end up breaking sometype of relationship between children. In todays world, it is ok to live with someone to "test" out the waters. This does not seem like a very good explaination for why they are doing this. First of all as just two people living together, there is no commitment involved in the realationship which can cause for an easy break up over a little fight, while in a marriage you learn to work things out. This can cause trouble if there are kids involved. Just like a divorce is so controversial, the break up of two people living together can also cause some pain to the children. This may seem like the easy way out, but do you really want to be that person that has to tell you kids that your boy/girlfriend is leaving and not coming back. This is not something that i ever want my children to go through!!! I never want them to feel like the did not have parents. Also as a couple living together how do they split up the responsibilities?? Who has what job, and what are they suppose to do?? Who nurtures, who provides??

This is becoming such a big thing to live together in the United States and in the World. States are now giving the same rights to these couples living together as they are to married couples. This does not seem fair, bacause as a married couple you have to work through your problems while the other couple just has to have one move out and the problem is fixed. There is nothing there to keep a man or a woman attached to their companion, except the fact that they might have children.

I do not believe that "testing" out by living together is they way to go about this. I believe that people should date and get into a serious relationship and learn about each other and then decide if it is right to get married. The trial marriage will most likly not work out and they will not most likely end up in a marriage, because it is so much easier to just live together!!