Marriage Music Monday – A Letter to my couples about to be Married?

Dear Bride and Groom,

I know it’s wedding season. Just like you, brides and grooms all over this nation are in different stages of planning for their wedding. They may have spent months, even years putting their blessed event together. This is it! The Super Bowl of your lives together.  At some point before the festivities, you might get some quiet, reflection time and these thoughts may come to your head echoed in this classic tune made popular by James Ingram and Patti Austin. “How Do You Keep the Music Playing”.

How do you keep the music playing?

How do you make it last?

How do you keep the song from fading too fast?

I expect they will, especially when most of your conversations heve been centered around a common theme, the wedding, the invitations, and the reception. Sudden changes or disruptions around that bond can cause a void in your marriage. You often feel a sense of fear of what will we do next; what will we have to talk about.

You can be exceptionally vulnerable to challenges early on in marriage because usually you have never experience adversity. Everything is great. In the dating phase, you focus on if he/she is the one. The passion and chemistry that you have between each other can overpower any subtle challenges or obstacles that are evident to an innocent bystander. As your dating relationship progresses, you begin to discuss the future and how great it will be to committ yourself to the other. Finally, when the gentleman finally pops the question over the Jumbotron, or in a movie theatre, the whirldwind of excitement goes into overdrive.

It’s great and it should be. Weddings are wonderful and should be celebrated. These thoughts are natural, even expected. It’s how you handle them that’s important. As you are about to take those final steps down the alter, consider these 5 tips to bring calmness to the next stage in your relationship.

1. If you have fears about your upcoming marriage, face them. If you avoid them it will diminish all you have worked for up to this point. – Don’t allow your fears about the future to feaster. If your intuition is telling you there is a problem, discuss it. Avoiding it will deepen not only doubt in your partner, but in yourself.
2. Embrace that you will have to stretch in you marriage. – In order to grow in your marriage, you will have to go beyond your comfort level. You and your partner will go through a set of growing pains of flexibility and compromise to have the type of marriage you want.
3. Your primary relationship is with your partner, not your wedding planner. – If you have issues regarding details of the wedding, do not use your wedding planner to do it. If you can’t discuss important details with your spouse around the wedding, how will you do it when you are married?
4. Committment is not just for the wedding day, it’s an ongoing process. – Your marriage will go through challenges..Its at these times you will have to remind yourself that I am committed to this man/woman even through tough times.
5. Don’t keep your feelings of gratitude silent. – Sharing openly with your partner that you are thankful for them and the journey you are about to take can go a long way to deepening your connection.

If we can be the best of lovers
yet be the best of friends
If we can try with every day to make it better as it goes
With any luck than I suppose
The music never ends.

Take this to heart, and things will turn out great.

Sincerely,

Coach Keith