What challenges will I face early in my marriage?
Often we're not prepared for the challenges that come into our marriage. We expect it to be a constant, but there are ebbs and flows, ins and outs. You're going to feel closer to your partner sometimes and not so close others. Marriage is to hold on to love no matter what, whether the tide is in or the tide is out. That's one of our greatest challenges. Another challenge that we need to learn to face in marriage is when conflict happens. Often, what will happen is when we become disappointed or our partner gets angry with us, we personalize it and look at it as a failure: a failure of our relationship, a failure of our love. It's really important to know that disappointments and conflict happen, it has nothing to do with love. Your love can remain constant even if you disagree with your partner. This is also a challenge. Some of the biggest challenges we have to face when we first get married are the changes. Sometimes our partner might get fat, or our sex life changes. Before we get married, there's lots of sex, then we get married and suddenly kids come and there's not the love and the attention and the attraction there used to be. The change in our lifestyle sometimes really shakes us to the core. Just know change happens and marriage is about learning how to flow with the change. That's the challenge and that's the gift of marriage.
