My husband Brent and I have now been married for 7 months, and while we might have a lot to learn that only time can bring, our short time as newly-weds has been very eye-opening. It can be so easy to look at a person’s life and how it’s represented on Instagram in this perfect way and think that everything is so easy, but in reality, marriage is something that takes a lot of work.
Brent and I chose not to live together before we got married, and while I am proud of our decision and believe it was the best thing for us, it also made our transition into the life of newly-weds a little more trying. For those who are already living together and settled into a lifestyle, not that much changes besides the legalities, but when you wait, it all happens at once. While I can see why couples would want to try each other out and make sure they are compatible living together, for us personally, I believe that the every day annoyances or differences Brent and I might experience living in close quarters every day could never be reason enough not to get married. They might cause fights or make things difficult as we adjust, but none of it represents Brent as a person or his heart or his character, nor mine. I knew I wanted to marry him because of the man he is.
So, I’m here to share my perspective as a freshly-married women living with a man for the first time and hopefully offer some helpful advice to ease the transition for those who might be doing the same as us. I realize it might be a little old-school and that most people do live together first (which is totally fine, I’m not saying either is right or wrong!) but I do know that a lot of people do wait and that they don’t always have someone who can relate that they can talk to about it.
Introduction: Why we chose to wait:
Waiting to live together was mainly my idea. The main reason I wanted to wait was because it was a request of my parents. They had always voiced to both me and my older sister (who also waited) that they didn’t think it was appropriate for us to move in with a man before marriage. My mom knew that my dad, being the very proper man that he is, wouldn’t like the idea of it, and my mom respects and supports what means a lot to him. If it means a lot to him, then it means a lot to her, and the same goes for my dad and how he feels about her. My parents are my world, and they have given me everything I could possibly need or want for my entire life, so why would I purposely disrespect their wishes? Also, they have an incredible marriage. They just celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary and are so happy together, so I have always trusted their advice when it comes to love. I know that they are always looking out for me and want what’s best for me. Brent was nothing but supportive, and while his parents may not have voiced to him that they would be against us living together, his mom is also Southern and proper, so I’m sure she was happy with our decision as well.
Manage Your Expectations:
I put this one first because it is something I personally have had to do a lot of. I can be a romantic, and I definitely went into our marriage with expectations of how our lives would change once we were man and wife and living under the same roof every day. I’ve loved romantic comedies my whole life, and even though it’s silly, I definitely expected Brent to all of a sudden be the most romantic husband in the world as soon as a ring was on his finger. In reality though, Brent is many wonderful things, but super romantic? Not really. Did I know that from the entire two years leading up to our wedding? YES! Brent’s love language is acts of service, so his way of showing me love is by fixing broken things in our house, giving me his new phone so I could have the better camera for work, hanging our wedding photos perfectly, making our coffee in the morning, leaving work right away to help with my car troubles, and randomly buying me a new hairbrush when I’ve been using a broken one. So why did I think he would suddenly be making me candle light dinners every night or leaving me love notes around the house?
For some reason, I expected him to do things that weren’t normal for him at all, and I was disappointed about it in the beginning which is not fair to him. He never promised me those silly things or asked me to be different than the person he knew that I was. So, my advice is to be sure that you don’t expect your significant other to be some idea that you have created in your head based on nothing. Living together will change a lot of things about your relationship, but it won’t change your love languages or other personality traits. You can certainly have wants and needs and it’s important to express those and for your S/O to listen and want to do them because they love you, but having unrealistic expectations can cause unnecessary stress. Remember to understand their love language and to recognize love when they show it their own way.
Figure Out Your Finances:
This might seem obvious, but I include it because money is naturally a source of stress in any relationship, so it’s important to figure it out before marriage. When a couple lives together first, it’s definitely easier to understand on how you each handle finances because daily life forces you to figure out exactly what you want to do. You have to figure out how you’re going to do rent, groceries, utilities, ect… and you see everything they’re purchasing.
Brent and I made sure we had lots of conversations about finances before we got married (it was an entire week’s topic for us during our premarital counseling with our pastor), but there are so many things that don’t even cross your mind to discuss if you don’t live together! To protect our privacy I won’t go into details here, but just trust me, the first few months of our marriage involved weekly conversations about how to handle certain financials, and it was a stress we didn’t realize we would have to deal with at all because we thought we talked about everything. We had shared a credit card during our engagement, and we had decided on sharing a joint checking account when we got married (which I highly recommend), but that’s really all we knew.
I also have a close friend who said she and her husband had a lot of stress around their budget because they were both Type A about how they handled their money and both of them thought their way was better. They thought that since they both were so good at handling their own money that combining their finances would be a breeze, but actually it was also really stressful for them. She told me she was glad they figured that our before they got married, but living together first was what forced the conversation earlier on.
There’s a reason why people always say that money can be the main cause of disagreements in marriages, and my advice would be just because you think you won’t have issues with it, doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t try to have those tough and deep conversations before marriage. If I could go back, I would have made us take more time with it then and talk to more married couples about it so that it wouldn’t have been a stress during our newly-wed months.
Decide on Household Duties:
I will brag on us for a second and say Brent and I did this right. I am definitely the messier one in the relationship. Brent is very tidy and I am usually the one leaving the mess, so leading up to our wedding we had lots of talks about household chores and duties. I expressed my fear of bothering him with my mess, and he was very open and honest with me about exactly what types of messes bother him and which ones didn’t. I never made any promises to be perfect, but since he knows what a struggle being clean can be for me, he appreciates every effort I put into it and acknowledges it every time he sees me trying to be clean for him. Words of affirmation are one of my love languages, so this cycle of me giving him acts of service and him giving me affirmation is a mutually respectful and loving rhythm in our house.
Also, he knows I don’t like to cook, so he makes our meals at least 3-4 times a week, or when it’s my turn, he’s usually in the kitchen helping me with what I’m making. We discussed that this is something that would probably happen before we got married, but he also told me that he doesn’t like to do the dishes, so after he cooks I usually do the cleaning. Doing the dishes doesn’t bother me at all, so the system we came up with works really well for us.
Knowing the chores you each like to do/don’t like to do and kind of assigning them to each other can really take that stress away of feeling like one of you is doing more work than the other. Saying things like, “well, I really hate taking out the trash, so if you don’t mind doing that, I can do the laundry!” is just a great way to negotiate. Talking about it before you move in together can also take away the chance of you getting stuck doing a chore you hate just because you just happen to be the one who ends up doing it and your S/O gets used to you doing all the time.
Do Premarital Counseling:
I always knew this was something I wanted to do with my future husband. I try to be as practical as possible and keep my romantic spirit at bay when it comes to the complexities of marriage, and I wanted us to get in front of a non-partial person who could guide us and get us talking about things we wouldn’t have thought about.
I also wanted it to be a Godly person, so I was glad the pastor at our church was willing to do it for us. We went for 5 weeks, and it really opened up a lot of conversations for us. Our pastor is a man we both look up to, and to hear his guidance was so important. He also recommended a book for us to read, The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy and Kathy Keller, which I loved. It really spoke to us as a Christian couple, and gave great and realistic advice on how to stay committed to each other over time.
One Last Tip:
Just remember, give your significant other grace. Unless you’re marrying a wildly selfish person, most likely, the person you love isn’t trying to do anything to hurt or upset you on purpose. It’s only been 7 months living with Brent, and I already feel like I know him a thousand times better than I did when we lived apart. I can see so much more clearly exactly how he shows me his love in little things he says or does that would go unrecognized by anyone else. Instead of being upset about the one silly he did that made me mad, I can instead choose to focus on the hundreds of little ways he shows me he loves me and makes me happy. Give each other grace where you deserve it, because no one is perfect.
