Advice for the Newlyweds

My daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks, and I have been thinking a lot about what advice I would give for the newlyweds. 

Every marriage (and every relationship) requires work to be happy and successful, and that work is almost always in our own minds and hearts and examining our own thoughts and feelings.  

Today on the podcast, I’m sharing eight things that I think every newlywed should know. Whether you are brand new at marriage or have been married for decades, these thoughts will make every marriage more awesome.

8 Things Newlyweds Should Know

You have expectations, and you might not even know it. 

We have all seen and been taught about marriage throughout our lives, and we think we know what marriage is about. We each come into the marriage with these thoughts and expectations. 

You may not even realize that you have these ideas about what marriage is supposed to be, or you might assume that your spouse has the same expectations that you do. 

A lot of the pain and dissatisfaction that comes into our marriages is because of the discrepancy between our expectations and our reality. My advice: Lower every single expectation you have and be willing to question them all.

Love who they actually are - not who you think they are supposed to be.

Often, we have a made-up, idealized version in our heads of who our partner is supposed to be, and we’re waiting for a different version of them to show up before we can love them. 

We withhold our love, and we’re even sort of cheating on them with the imaginary version. Your job is just to let them be them and to love them as they are. 

Their only job is to be there for you to love.

You’ve probably received the message that your spouse is there to take care of you, make you feel good, support you or complete you. But really, their only job is to be there for you to love. 

I like to think that the point of marriage is to have a partner to practice the skill of love with. Learning to choose love over everything else is the hardest work that any of us will do while we’re here on Earth, and marriage is a unique vehicle to practice that choice.

Allow yourself the chance to practice love. 

Many of us think we should already be good at love. We look at our spouse, and we know we love them. So when it gets hard, we think there’s something wrong with us or with them. 

We find ourselves choosing things other than love, like resentment, frustration or annoyance. We get mad at ourselves and fall into shame. And when that doesn’t feel good, we blame the other person. It can easily become a cycle.

But when you’ve chosen something besides love, you get to try it again. Every moment is a clean slate. You’re both going to get it wrong sometimes, and the faster you can make that okay and forgive, the faster you can get back to connection. 

They're not there to solve your feelings. 

It is not your spouse’s job to make you feel happy, loved, appreciated or supported. They can't create any feeling for you. 

You are the only one who can create your feelings, and they are created by your own thoughts. The more that you can take responsibility for your own emotional experience, the better you're going to feel inside your marriage.

They’re not there to solve the fall.

We live in a fallen world where a lot of bad things will happen between now and the end of your life. Your spouse and your marriage are not there to remove that opposition and make things easier for you. They’re there so that you’re not alone when you’re doing the hard things.

When we get married, we want to believe that because we are together, we’ll be able to transcend the human experience, and it will be different for us. But we are still in a fallen world, and your wedding is not the end of all your troubles. The 50/50 still applies in marriage. 

Problems in your marriage are solved in the T line.

When your marriage feels hard, you’re going to be tempted to think that the circumstances in your life are making it hard. And if you can just change what you're doing (your actions), you can fix it. 

Really, we solve problems in our marriage not through changing circumstances or actions, but by changing our thoughts. And when we change our thoughts, we can change our feelings. What matters most is how you think about your spouse, your marriage and yourself. 

Create your own country.

You are two people coming from two kingdoms or two different worlds. In each kingdom, your respective families have their own sets of rules, laws, customs, cultures and language. 

When we come together, each bringing all of the traditions from our individual countries, there is going to be conflict. There will be things that don’t line up. 

Neither way is right or wrong. As you come together to form this new country, you’ll decide for yourselves how you will do it. You have to trust yourself and your love. Your marriage and the way you do it is always right. There is no need for comparison to others.

As the days, weeks, months and years pass in your marriage, you will get better and better at loving each other. Allow yourself the room to practice, and allow your partner to be who they are. 

They are exactly who they need to be so that you can learn to choose love. You're in it together - You have what they need, they have what you need.

There is no marriage that is better than yours. Because it’s yours.

You’ll Learn:

• My top 8 pieces of advice for newlyweds 
• What marriage is really about
• The greatest gift you can give your spouse (that doesn’t cost a thing)
• Why more date nights won’t solve problems in your marriage