Engagement is one of the most exciting time periods of your life! While the hustle and bustle of wedding planning is thrilling and exciting, so is the prospect of creating this new life with the person you love.
But how exactly do you make the leap from engaged couple to married couple?
It’s not as simple as exchanging vows and rings. There’s a mental shift that needs happen in order to completely commit. Without this mental shift, marriage problems can crop up, and quickly.
The good news is that you don’t have to wait until you’re walking down the aisle before making the mental shift. You have all the time and space you need to start today.
Remember: You don’t live in a bubble. There’s no timestamp on this. There’s no “end goal” to work towards. This mental shift takes time and intentionality, but that’s part of what makes this journey so great.
I’m walking you through three different ways to work toward that transition and to create the best marriage for you and your fiancé.
Make decisions like a married couple.
Start from a strong friendship.
One of the most foundational ways to start making decisions as a team is to build a strong foundation of friendship in the relationship. This friendship foundation is considered a baseline relationship foundation because it is where the most relationship positivity stems from.
A friendship foundation creates a stable starting point for a positive feedback loop. That’s the fancy way of saying creating fond memories, a strong bond, and gravitating towards admiration and appreciation as a default in the relationship.
When you make decisions from this friendship foundation, you make the shift from “me and you” to “us”. Suddenly, ensuring the decision favors your preference isn’t front and center because your preference will be an outcome that’s best for both of you as a unit and as a team.
Why you shouldn’t be compromising.
The next step is where consensus versus compromise comes into play. Most people will give you the good intentioned, but bad advice of “learning how to compromise”.
I want you to unlearn how to compromise and replace it with how to come to a consensus. In a compromise, you both lose. One of you may win big, but the other one will probably lose big as a trade-off. In which case, you both lose because the loss usually comes at the sacrifice of trust and happiness.
In a consensus, you both win. It may not be as a big of win than if you went down the road of compromise and struck luck. But what makes this win more rewarding than the alternative is that it’s something you experience together.
It's not as simple as exchanging vows and rings. There's a mental shift that needs happen in order to completely commit. Click To TweetCommunicate like a married couple.
You need trust for this part. And here’s why.
Trust isn’t built overnight. It’s built through a small series of actions over time. Either these actions build up the bank account of trust, or they put it into the red and foster feelings of betrayal.
Regardless, trusting each other is the foundation for being able to communicate effectively. Both people need to feel like it’s safe to express their feelings, opinions, and emotions to the other, including when they feel hurt by an action or situation.
Lack of this trust can cause resentment to leak into the relationship and create negative sentiments about each other. And, trust me, no one wants to share their thoughts and emotions with someone they resent or with someone they think resents them.
Communicating by fight fair.
One milestone every couple has to go through to feel completely committed to each other is learning how to fight fairly. In world of relationships, we call this “conflict management and resolution”.
It’s exactly what it sounds like: Fighting fair is about learning how to tackle conflicts together and come to solution that you both mutually agree is the best choice.
It may sound like magic or wishful thinking, but it’s 100% possible. The key is discovering where each other’s pain points are and navigating them.
For example, some people get overwhelmed by the stress of conflict and want to retreat. In these cases, they mostly need space at first and a gentle approach to a solution, such as inviting their input.
The opposite of that example are people who become anxious by the stress and want to jump immediately into problem-solving. In these cases, they want their voices to be heard and to feel like their partner is interested in what they’re saying, opposed to being dismissed or avoided.
If you want to get into more detail on how to fight fair, be sure to check out these two articles: 10 Ways to Improve Your Marriage and 3 Stages of Every Relationship (see Stage 2).
Set goals like a married couple.
This is one of the most exciting aspects of a committed relationship: dreaming about the future together and actually making movements towards your dreams.
While it’s important to keep individual goals and dreams, it’s also important to set goals that you’d like to achieve together. This can be anything from traveling to home-owning to kids.
The best time to set these is while you’re engaged. This time period is the best time to go over expectations, on both sides, of what you imagine the marriage will be like, how you want to define yourselves as a couple, and what goals you’d like to achieve together.
It’s okay to go slow during this part and to take your time to make decisions. Remember: U-turns are always allowed and each person should have a voice in these matters.
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