I was chatting with a friend earlier and we got to talk about some of the foundations of marriage.

See, she’s getting married early next year and she’s encountering some, err, challenges with her fiance.

I strongly believe that one of the most important foundations of marriage is transparency, an open communication with your partner. Of course, love and trust are on the top of the list, but those two things are already a given.

Anyway, before we started planning for our wedding, the husband and I laid down all our cards, everything about ourselves, on the table. Expectations, personal goals, priorities, family values, EVERYTHING. Doing that gave us a deeper insight of who exactly are we marrying. I love him more after that baring of our souls.

For me, it is important that we discuss whatever it is that we think is important in our lives with our partners. That way, whenever there is a decision to be made, we can put into consideration THEIR opinion, plans, expectations, priorities, the works. If you don’t agree on something, that’s more reason for you to discuss things, so you can meet halfway, and both parties are taken cared of.

In marriage, there is no more “I”, “me”, or “you” - they have become “US”, “WE”, “OUR”. You have become one with your partner. Nobody leads your lives, but both of you face life’s challenges hand in hand, side by side, TOGETHER. You shouln’t forget that you and your partner are EQUAL, thus, should treat each other as such.

However, it is as essential to keep your identities apart from each other. This is important in you personal growth, which will help you better enrich your relationship with you partner. By keeping and nurturing your own identities, you are able to learn more from outside of your relationship. When you learn things apart, you have more to share to each other. You continually learn from each other, strengthening your connection.

I can go on and on, but the bottomline is, KEEPING YOU COMMUNICATION LINES OPEN AND CONTINUING TO LEARN WILL DO WONDERS TO YOUR MARRIAGE.

Having said all that, one might conclude that I am the married life guru, and the husband and I have the perfect marriage. We are far from it. We are continuously learning more and more about each other everyday. We are jumping over challenges of married life one hurdle at a time. We don’t fight, but we argue. We need that to learn more about each other.

Like I said in one of my previous posts, the husband and I are probably far from being the perfect parents, husband and wife, but we are not here to live up to other people’s standards.

We are here to enjoy each other’s company for the rest of our lives.

Credits to OffTheMark.Com for the image used in this post.