Why Your Relationships Should Be Viewed As Practice For Marriage
Happy Friday, my lovely ASSASSINS! I know you all are used to seeing a Feature Friday post but I decided to switch it up! Today we have a special guest that was so kind to contribute to our space. Please allow me to introduce you to JB! 🙂 Naturally, I thought this would be great because we can digest certain topics from a man’s perspective. In this post, JB is going to tell us why he thinks we should view our relationships as practice for marriage. Get prepared. . . because he drops some amazing gems! As always, enjoy!
Practice: Repeated exercise in a performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it. (Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary)
Any relationship you are in before marriage is practice for marriage. For some the goal may not be to tie the knot. In essence, people want to reach the highest levels of love with another person, whether that is marriage or not.
Beginning at infancy we are taught words from our native language, and it’s goal is to give us the foundation of effective communication. Even before digesting words, we learn non verbal signs so we can identify feelings and emotions. Meaning before we learn to speak, we learn to feel and respond silently without verbally communicating. I’m starting to understand why we love animals so much, because they do not need to speak to us to communicate effectively.
While in our earliest stages of development, we learn how to communicate with the opposite sex. Things to say and not to say, how to treat them, how to view them as people. We begin to ingest the gender stereotypes. We learn that girls should not have boyfriends until they’re 40 years old but boys should have minimum 40 girlfriends before settling down (exaggerated but the premise is solid). We learn that we shouldn’t hit girls but hug them, we should hold the door for them and to treat them like queens.
These mannerisms are supposed to develop with us as we matriculate into different stages of child and adulthood. What we’re learning is the foundation of how to develop relationships. They are experiences of situational practice; intended to be perfected or mastered for later stages of life, when relationships deepen in meaning and become arduous to maintain. We learn from who and what is teaching us on how to act in these relationships. To be frank, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. The reason why we say, do, and act a way towards situations is not far off from how we were taught to react during our upbringing.
“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice” – Peggy O’Mara
As we develop, we tussle with feelings and emotions during our teenage years. Our encounter with puppy love hits most people hard. Puppy love was so butter and beautiful, roses and bubbles everywhere. We dive in deep, the feeling of liking someone with invigorating intensity is new and seemingly not scary. Some stay enveloped in this feeling of love and others begin to experience different feelings towards love. We tussle again but this time it’s different.
Generally, we believe we can turn parts of ourselves on and off, and we can. We can portray ourselves one way around coworkers and switch to a relaxed version of ourselves at home. For some of us, soon as we leave the office we have already shed our work skin. What we don’t realize is that we can turn off the program but uninstalling it is what takes practice. We can believe that when we leave work, we are closer to the true version of ourselves. However, when we get home we are thinking about the next work day or digesting what happened at work. The program is still running in the background. It still exist, it’s still on and one text or call can bring it to the forefront. Though this is an analogy, it gives us a visual of how we view habits that we bring into relationships and marriages.
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We keep old habits running in the background thinking that marriage will cease them without our intervention. Marriage is a contract, and contracts are on paper, paper is only as good as the words that are on them, and words are nothing without those actions that hold them up, and actions are only as good as the intentions they have. Habits become ingrained in our character and if there is internal conflict that needs to be addressed prior to us committing then practice. Practice to change, practice to strengthen yourself and your partner.
As humans we try to stop a habit by engaging in something that will force us to, without addressing internally where the root of the issue commences. We engage in fasting from the tangible but not the internal. With relationships we should be excessively looking for growth, addressing issues as they ascend and descend. If you struggle with cheating prior to marriage, you will struggle with it in marriage. The binding of marriage will turn an unaddressed cheating issue into a monstrosity. If your partner does not keep their house clean prior to marriage, why would marriage change this narrative. If they don’t recognize your bad days from non verbal mannerisms, why would marriage change their awareness. Let’s be clear, no partner is perfect because no human is; marriage doesn’t require or even call for perfection. That’s not the intention of a marriage, it’s supposed to bring out the best of both individuals, to achieve something you could not do alone through love.
Be honest with yourself and understand that your behavioral foundation started before you could consciously understand you mannerisms and feelings. Don’t blame yourself for that. Control what you can control and that is your actions, now, as an adult. Practice you, everyday, with the intentions of getting better. Which will make your relationships stronger and have depth. Don’t compare your progression to anyone else’s progression, no two plants grow the same. Your partner deserves all of you and before you can do that, you have to give all, to yourself.
– JB, Author
To stay connected with JB, follow him on Twiter @TheReal_JB. I hope you all enjoyed this post and have some takeaways from it! If you have any other topics that you would like JB’s perspective on, please let us know in the comments!
Until next time ASSASSINS. . . Stay Disciplined!