After the Wedding – How to Survive Your First Year of Marriage

While you and your Price Charming are busy preparing for your dream wedding,  most if not all of you are also looking forward to your happily ever after married life.  Not to distract you from your plans and dreams, but have you stopped and think how many marriages survive past the first year of marriage?

In reality, marriage is not a happy ending but a glorious beginning to your new life.  While life as newlyweds is exciting it can also be challenging.  It is said that the first year of marriage is the hardest and people often speculate on if a new marriage will “survive” the first year.  Don’t let speculation and struggles get in the way, take care of the newlywed issues before they become problems and you’ll have a much easier first year.

Here are issues that newlyweds commonly argue about:

• Money
• In-laws
• Roles of each person
• Quality time
• Children

Money is an issue an alarming number of couples fight about, not just newlyweds.  Throwing a wedding can start your relationship off in debt.  If one of you already has debt, your monthly budget can be strained.  Pointing fingers about who spent what will not help in this situation.  You and your spouse need to sit down as soon as possible, look at your finances, and get a monthly budget in place.  Debt is not the end of the world, even though it can feel like it; you just need a plan to get debt paid off.

Mother-in-laws can be overbearing.   His mom (or your mom) means well, but she can make you feel like you’re married to two people instead of one.  If she always puts her two cents in on your problems refrain from speaking about them in front of her.  Ask your partner to do the same.  She can’t give you meddlesome advice on problems she doesn’t know about.  It’s also not fair to get mad at her for her opinion when you asked her for advice.

When you are sharing your nesting place, have you discussed who will do the dishes?  What about the laundry, paying the bills, grocery shopping, cooking, changing the oil…  If he expects you to cook will he be in charge of clean up?  Roles around the house aren’t about who has to do what chore, but what can you do to make the household run smoothly.  Maybe you and your hubby can do the dishes together after dinner while you both give each other flirty looks and smiles – you might like where it ends up.

When you were dating, as long as you two were together the day was perfect.  After you are married you might not want to watch him play golf and he might not enjoy watching you shop.  That’s okay, just be sure to set aside quality time together.  If one of you has to endure an activity that’s not on their fun list, focus on each other and not the activity.

Children can be a big issue.  Should you start trying right away?  Do you want to wait five years?  Do you even want kids?  Hopefully this conversation took place early on in the relationship.  If not, have it now.  Don’t panic if your partner’s answer doesn’t match