Week #6

This week we talked about adjusting to marriage. Being recently married this seemed to apply to me a lot, and I was able to really make a lot of connections with our class discussions, and gain so powerful insight on how I can improve in adjusting to the changes I am currently facing in marriage. One of the things that stuck out to me that most was the iportance of talking about the changes that are occuring, and how beneficial it would be to talk about them and plan for them and discuss how to deal with them beforehand. It is kind of too late now to talk about most of them beforehand since we are already facing them, but as far as future things, such as children, that is a good insight I gained that we should talk about those change and challenges before they even occur, so we are more prepared to handle them together.
One of the changes that we discussed in class was boundaries. When we got married I had to cut some of my relationships with my family members, not completely but in some ways, so it would not come in the way of my relationship with my husband. I have always been super close with my mom, and whenever I am having a problem, before I would always just call her up and she always knew what to say, and I really felt like I could talk to her about anything, and she always helped me out a ton. So when we first got married that was such a huge change I had to adjust to, because I knew that my relationship that I needed to focus on from now on was my relationship with my husband, which did not include my mom. I mean it was okay to still call her every now and again, and maybe get some advice, but never diclose any personal information from our relationship, and mostly just call her to talk and catch up in life. It has been really hard because when things get tough, I want to just call her up and ask her what to do, even just get her reassurance that it's normal, and that everything will be okay, but luckily from the beginning, I knew that was only going to break my marriage.
However, my husband has a similar relationship with his father. I had noticed that he spent a lot of time talking to him on the phone, and that sometimes he diclosed some personal information from our relationship that he really shouldn't. He called for his advice frequently, not that that is super bad, but the frequency was what was bothering me. Sometimes I even felt as if he was making our own personal decision with his dad, and not with me. His dad had  been brought into the relationship, and now important decisions like when to have kids was between my husband, his dad...and kind of me. When really decisions like that need to between me, my husband and the Lord.
Marriage is a hard adjustment and it takes more than a lifetime to figure out how to make things work, and how to create a loving and perfect marriage. But, that is why we must be careful to always use the time that we have to always improve. I was thankful that we discussed the importance of defining boundaries in a marriage this week, because it helped me pinpoint what it was that was weakening our marriage. I could feel tension between me and my husband building up, and I constantly felt as if there was something I was missing, that really was weakening our marriage, and in the back of my mind was truly bothering me, I just didn't know what. I think it was even causing me to loose some trust in him, because I felt like he was keeping things from me, because he never talked with me about those important things. After recongnizing this, I went to my husband and was able to confide in him what I saw happening and the dangers of it. We were able to sit down and discuss some of the boundaries we should have discussed long ago, but better late than never! We have long ways to go and a lot of work, but recongnizing and mending things that are hindering that most important relationship with your spouse is so important, and worth anything.