As a person of faith, I believe having Jesus as the center of our lives is important in a marriage. Marriage expresses many needs. In my humble opinion, the majority of time is spent on the wedding rather than preparing for the marriage. You’ve got me feeling emotions. Someone once shared that we could think with our minds and behave in a logical manner. The mind is logical, while the heart can be illogical. When it comes to marriage and preparations, people sometimes think with their hearts when in love instead of their minds. When we make decisions with our hearts, we can make some illogical ones. While most of them are small and can wait a long time, others are more critical. Failing to meet those few basic needs often leads to marital unhappiness and even separation. In this article, we will introduce five essential needs in a marriage and try to understand them. This list can be inexhaustible for the sake of time, we shall highlight these five..
Love
Even though it sounds cliche, love is essential for a happy marriage. We might not immediately think so, but love can serve as a catch-all term for a variety of emotions. Love has the capacity to foster inner and outer validation, kindness, the willingness to put oneself in harm’s way for the benefit of others, etc. It’s never simple to define or categorize love. Many people confuse real love for something else. To reach the entire range of qualities a marriage may extract and profit from, a combination of physical, emotional, and even cerebral love is required. Each fiber of our bodies can feel love, and individuals who don’t experience enough love may turn away from their family, society, and even themselves.
Children
Children are God’s gift, and as such, being a parent should not be taken lightly. Being a parent today doesn’t have to be convenient and should not be taken lightly. Being a parent today doesn’t have to be convenient. Don’t worry, there are options. You have the ability to become the mother or father that God has chosen for you to be. It may not have happened according to your ideas, but everything God does is good and perfect. Sometimes it does feel like it, but that is a discussion for another time, friends. Depending on the decisions made in their marriage, a couple becoming parents for the first time or several times can be a joyous and frightening experience.
Although some argue that children are optional in a marriage, it is challenging to accept that idea. Children are the product of two people agreeing to put aside personal interests and differences for a third future person. It is not wrong to see children as an investment that will pay off in the near or distant future. Far from being your duty to assure the survival of the species, children are a projection of your love. They are the survival and materialization of your feelings. Children should become a priority in any marriage. A child can give purpose to a marriage that is unable to achieve convergence and bring peace of mind. Marriage is the best setting for fostering love on all levels.
Space
It might sound strange about this third need, but it is there alongside more traditional needs. Yes, the two forming a couple often need space between them to re-evaluate their roles, duties, responsibilities, and expectations. Spending time alone enables you to recharge. In a marriage when two personalities are merged, you can either learn to retain your individuality or one of the personalities will take control of the other. It will take some active practices such spa days, walking on the beach, treating yourself to a meal, or going to play. The list could go on. Creating your own space can act counter-intuitively and bring people closer together. Distance often fuels lost love or desire, as you learn to appreciate the things you already have the moment, they are taken away from you. Space can also be seen as trust, respect, and the ability to put aside the need to control your partner’s life. Marriage should never consume your time and space for personal initiatives.
Time and patience
You might ask why the two needs appear packed together in the fourth position. Time without patience is just stress, unrest, and negative emotions. Marriages are processes; they need time to unfold and reach their true potential. Although many consider time the ultimate test for a marriage, it’s better to see it as a sculpting force, able to reveal hidden potential. But sculpting with time is a delicate and often arduous job that requires all the patience it can get. The lack of faith in time and patience towards the one you share your life with are the main causes of marriage’s structural failure. They form the backbone, and when that is taken away, what is left can be frail.
Honesty
We must, regrettably, conclude the list of needs with another cliche. Knowing that your marriage might be a small bubble where you can turn off your firewall is really comforting because we live in a world where lying, cheating, and pretending are commonplace. Your souls should also be exposed as you strip off in front of one another, exposing anything that can cause pressure or discomfort. The ability to be open about anything without worrying about the consequences is what honesty ultimately is, despite the myriad ways in which it might be disguised. In every marriage, there is a focus on “political correctness,” which gives the truth a lot of “make-up,” but honesty should balance it out.