Dianne C. Sloan - Getting Ready for Marriage Workbook: Knowing the Person Youre Going to Marry

Getting Ready for Marriage is a workbook designed from a Christian perspective to help you look seriously at your decision to marry. The love, knowledge, and behavioral patterns you have developed in your relationships and the commitment you are about to make to each other are the primary issues of this book.

Before the wedding is the time to talk about your expectations of marriage and the understanding you have of yourselves and each other in such areas as: family of origin, communication, conflict resolution, attitudes, religion, financial management, sexual relationships, and children.

Everything you bring into your marriage has been influenced by your family of origin. You are who you are because of what you have experienced, inherited, been taught, and seen modeled for you throughout your life. Your attitudes, morals, values, beliefs, and priorities are all influenced by your family and are the building blocks for the expectations you bring to your marriage relationship. Over the past fifty years, marriage counselors have come to understand that one of the most significant factors in a marriage is the influence of the family of origin.

Your family includes your father and mother, brothers and sisters, and all relatives, peers, friends, and others who have been significant in your life. All of these people have influenced you in what have become your ways. Their influence has molded your perspective on life, and you probably see their way of relating as the way to conduct yourself in a relationship.

As you grow in your understanding of your beliefs, attitudes, expectations, values, and priorities, and those of your spouse-to-be, you can be more tolerant, patient, and loving in building a better marital relationship. By knowing more about yourselves and your families, and by developing better communication skills, you will become able to choose to incorporate into your marriage the good and healthy practices of each of your families and leave behind those ways that will hinder the growth of your new marriage. This is the first step in the creation of your new family.

As you work through this book, you can expect to make new discoveries about yourself and your spouse-to-be. You will learn how you are different from and similar to one another. Just remember that different doesnt mean bad, nor does it mean wrong. It just means different. Dont expect to see everything the same way; that would be impossible. You come from different families with different sets of rights and wrongs different ways of living life.

Good communication is the key that opens the door to a healthy, happy, and more stable marriage. Remember to share your differences openly and honestly, and begin seeking a solution to your problems.

This book is designed to help you expand your communication with one another and understand the commitment you are making when you marry. At the end of some sessions you will find a covenant. A covenant is a promise, a commitment. Like the covenant our Lord made with us, you will make a covenant with each other when you enter into marriage. The covenant you find at the end of some sessions is really just an expansion of the marriage vows. Make these covenants yours. Feel free to add to or adjust the statements as they apply to you and your spouse-to-be. If either of you has difficulty signing the covenants, it may be a sign that you need to talk more about the issues in that section or that you are just not ready to make a lifetime commitment.