Three Lessons from Your Marriage You Can Pass down to Your Children
No matter how many mistakes you’ve made in your marriage, you always have lessons learned that you can pass down to your children. No one does it perfectly. We learn through and from our mistakes. In the process, we learn how to overcome those mistakes and forgive both our partner and ourselves.
Every parent hopes their children can do better. Parents want their children to avoid making the same mistakes and the pain that goes along with those mistakes. Unfortunately, some parents don’t feel they have anything to teach their kids. They feel unqualified to pass down advice since they also got it wrong in so many ways. They feel helpless and destined to see history repeat itself via their children.
Some parents have the opposite challenge of wanting to give too much advice. They are so keen to advise that they end up smothering instead of guiding. In an attempt to keep their children from making any mistakes, they become overbearing as they try to take over every aspect of their child’s adult life. They have a hard time knowing when to advise and when to let go.
If you fall into one of these categories and want to know the best way to help your child as they approach their wedding day, here is a good place to start.
Make the Wedding Inclusive Rather than Exclusive
Every detail of the wedding needs to represent both bride and groom, as well as their families and friends. Everything from the venue to the music to the wedding invites need to be considerate and inclusive of the cultural imperatives of the people you invite.
A common mistake in weddings is to make it all about the bride and her family, or the groom and his family. The one planning the details gets to decide everything based on their likes and dislikes. This can breed resentment from those not represented by those choices.
If the bride and groom are from different ethnicities the details need to have bicultural sensibilities. This awareness needs to begin with the wedding invitations and from there, permeate every aspect of the wedding. This one piece of advice might make all the difference between your child having a great start or a rocky one.
Compromise on Household Decor
One of the first lessons you should pass on to your adult children when it comes to marriage is the importance of compromise. Failure to learn that lesson can be a problem when it comes to decorating a couple’s first home together. If she wants a giant dollhouse while he wants a hunting lodge, there will be problems if both sides don’t learn the art of compromise.
Compromise is the art of bringing both sides to a solution that neither would have agreed to on their own. It ensures that neither side gets exactly what they wanted. If one side gets exactly what they wanted, then it wouldn’t be a compromise.
The way to make compromise work is to remind both sides that love demands sacrifice. By focusing on their love for each other, they are able to reduce the importance of the thing on which they have to compromise. In a marriage, love and companionship are so important. As a parent who has been through it all, that is definitely a lesson you can pass down to your freshly married child.
People Change
One of the hardest lessons to learn is that people change. The person you are today will be different from the person you will be 10 years from now. The same is true of the person you marry. Often, a marriage ends because one person is shocked and dismayed that their partner has changed. But that is a simple, biological, and psychological truth that should catch no one by surprise.
You should advise your children that changes will occur. And that is perfectly normal. The love between two people also changes over time. It grows into something less fiery and more stable. That change is nothing to fear. It is something to eagerly anticipate.
You have a lot to teach your adult children about the next phase of their lives. Be sure those lessons include the importance of inclusiveness, compromise, and change.
Tips contributed by Sterling Guelich
