Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Talking Marriage

Today, I stumbled across an article titled Ten Things to Consider Before Getting Married. Lots of food for thought.

I forwarded the article to Adam and it opened up a nice dialogue of some of our expectations, habits, compromises we'll have to make, etc. It was good. We found that we're pretty much in alignment with everything.

If I haven't learned anything else from before, I did learn that communication is SO very important. Sure, people say that all the time, but it's really true. The thing is, I'm very non-confrontational. If someone does something and I get upset by it, I find it hard to go to the person and say "Hey, it really bugged me when you did blah blah blah." But I've found that when I suck it up and say something, a few things happen.
1. He gets a chance to explain what he meant or why he said it or whatever.
2. I get to realize that it probably wasn't as bad as I thought it was.
3. The air is cleared.
I'm not carrying around this hidden resentment and bitterness, everything is cleared up, and we can move on. In the past, I used to hold stuff in, let it fester, and then something small would push me over the edge and I would shut down. I am terrible with The Silent Treatment. It is so much easier (at least, right away) to shut down and stew. But these days, I force myself out of my comfort zone and actually TALK about whatever is bothering me. It's so much better for both of us this way. And in the long run, a lot easier than letting stuff build up.

The article talks about "plans," and he outlines the basics for starting a conversation about 1-, 3-, 6-, and 9-year plans. Those things cover meatier topics, but I think we can manage it. :) I *LIKE* to talk about relationship-related stuff. And wedding stuff. And romantic stuff.

'Til next time!

2 comments:

Zenosidal said...

AND you don't grind your teeth then festering it all! :-p AH-OOooommmm! LoL

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