well if you relationship fell apart when you lived together aren't you glad you didn't get married and then divorced?

After Mr. MereMere and I got married, NOTHING changed from when we lived together. I had already gotten used to his little quirks, as he got used to mine.

Musts before a wedding
 

1) Discuss future plans including
A) finances: know what each of you OWES, discuss budgets,
and spending/saving habits. You cannot effectively plan or
*have* anything plan if your finances are out of control.
B) children: if, how many, and when along with child rearing
philosophy. If one of you stringently wants 3 kids *right
now* and the other none, this can lead to major conflict.
Also, if one believes firmly in spanking and the other does
not (just an example), conflict can arise.
C) educational and occupational plans: when, where, and how
to finance. What a shock to realize that the other plans on
moving you away from your family.

2) Family: do not just "meet" the family. Get to know the other's family. When you marry someone, you also marry their family. Know important family traditions and if that persons wants to be near his/her family. Sometimes knowing the family secrets and rifts helps to make the transition easier.

3) Discuss and decide on religious views. When two people come from very different religious backgrounds, it is easy enough to say, "I will go my way and you go yours." For some this works, but after 5 years or so of marriage and no agreeing, it can get lonely attending services alone. This also has implications for the children.

4) Discuss and plan a way to manage fights and disagreements. Lay down ground rules.

Just my 2 cents. :)
Silver

Edited for my horrible grammar....

Establish yourself in a career. If you do that you will know that, if need be, you will be able to function independantly and support yourself.

But that's the whole point--things will *always* surface after you're married, and the strategies you apply for dealing with those things within your committed marriage determine your success or failure as a couple.

When just living together, you don't have that same committment that you do when you're married...so your coping strategies are *utterly* different.

Then, if/when they finally get married, the couple rarely realizes that they need a *whole* new set of strategies....since the committment of marriage changes the entire dynamic.

I know this probably sounds insane...it's kind of one of those things that is nearly impossible to understand until you've been through it (and watched all of your friends go through it).

Marriage (she says, as her 2 year anniversary approaches next week) is a wonderful, amazing, special, precious thing--but it is HARD, and it takes an incredible amount of work and dedication, and a whole new mindset that can be well...very Weird at first.

My husband and I dated for 4 years before we got engaged, then were engaged for a year, and we were shocked at how difficult the transition was (and we have 2 sets of great role models in our parents--mine have been married 33 years, and his have been married 29 years next month).

I just hate to see people setting themselves up for a harder road than the early part of marriage can already be...and I think living together makes that road a good deal harder (and the statistics back me up).

Now the 2nd year of marriage....THAT'S been fun!

Wow, these are all great. Especially the ones encouraging living on one's own, making a living, and just growing up. I've often wondered what drives people to get married right out of college. I felt like such a big baby when I graduated that I would have gone from being a pampered daughter to being a pampered wife. (I would have been like Jessica Simpson!)

I think we've discussed the living together thing on other threads...for some people, it's great. For others, not so much. Living in NYC, I've noticed an epidemic of people who really aren't ready to live together, but insane apartment costs and odd leases usually drive people, who in less expensive cities would wait to live together, to move in with each other early. I guess it all depends on how honest each person is and what they're expecting the relationship to bring. The Alternatives to Marriage Project (www.unmarried.org), a nonprofit group that helps couples who for some reason are not marrying, has a list of things to do if you're planning on marrying your cohabitating partner. Everyone recognizes that you have to go into those situations differently.

Keep 'em coming! :D

on a related but lame note:

nomarriage.com

scary and misguided, but I suppose people will do anything to sell a book :rolleyes:

I second Silver's advice...

Definitely discuss where you're going to be 5, 10, 20, ... years from now. Marriage is a lifetime commitment (or at least, it ought to be). That means financially, professionally (for both of you), and in terms of having children (when, how many, public vs. private school, etc).

Discuss religion, even if you're of the same faith. One of you might want your kids to have a strict Jewish/Catholic/Muslim/whatever upbringing while the other could care less. Naturally, the religion discussion becomes even more important if you're of different faiths.

I'm an advocate of spending some time living on your own and supporting yourself. I'm also an advocate of living together before marriage, if that's something both members of the couple are comfortable with. I personally would (and did) wait for engagement, but that's JMO.

Something else to consider
 

Talk about ways to renew your relationship and continue this discussion FOREVER! Vow renewals are important..whether said over dinner or in front of a crowd.

Always remember that marriage is like any job; it requires work. Some days you want to quit; other days you are king of the hill. To paraphrase _Just Married_
"You must take the good times along with the bad times. The good times are the only ones that appear in photo albums, but the bad times are what sees you between those pictures."

Again, my 2 cents...
Silver

When my ex-husband first proposed I told him that it was too soon because we hadn't discussed religion, future goals, etc. We talked at length and agreed that 1) He would attend the Catholic church, possibly convert and had no problem with raising our kids Catholic and 2) We would move to North Carolina before our oldest child reached the age of 5. While we dated we got along great, communicated, were able to compromise, etc. We went through the whole Catholic marriage prep process with ease, agreeing on everything! Everybody thought we were a perfect fit.

Once we were married, he started watching Televangelists and sending them thousands of dollars a year. He never wanted to go out anymore, he stopped communicating altogether and I found out the most by listening to his conversations with his dad on the phone. He even told me one time, when I said we should do something because it sounded fun that "I had fun before I got married, now I want to watch TV". When we went to buy our first house, it turned out that he couldn't live farther than 5 miles from his dad. I inquired about our North Carolina plan and was informed that he had decided he could never move that far away (it was his idea in the first place!). He ended up joining the Baptist church and now my kids are Baptist also.

My point? Just because you discuss all those things, sometimes they are just saying and doing what they think you want so that you'll marry them. Also, sometimes the "committment" of marriage makes them think that they no longer have to work at the relationship at all. I might not have learned all that about him if we'd lived together before we got married, but I WOULD have learned what a total and complete slob he was! LOL .. That would've killed the deal way back then!

Dee

CONGRATULATIONS on making your marriage work! It is harder than most people realize (both the marriage and living together than before marriage). I hope to someday find a guy worthy enough to tame me and wonderful enough to earn my committment, trust, respect, and love :)

I've always heard that sometimes you may have to work at your marriage, but it shouldn't BE work.

I think the phrase "working at a marriage" is misleading. Yes you have to work to make a relationship work (not be "me me me"), but at the same time it shouldn't feel like you are working - you should want to compramise, want to let him has his way sometimes, give a little and get a little :) I know we both had to work to keep this marriage going but it never once felt like work.

Marriage as work
 

I actually (respectfully) disagree. I know that it sounds romantique to say that marriage may be work but should not feel like it.....but, there are days that both of you will want to "win" and be very adamant about it. Not everything in life is a compromise or able to be compromised.

All of the married couples that I know (including Mr.Silver and me) who have been married over ten years have had bad days, months, or even years in our marriages. The longer that I am married, the more that I can see how much strength and effort it takes to stay *happliy* married in today's society.

Just my humble 2 cents,
Silver

don't get me wrong Silver - there have been *many* days where I wanted to ring his neck, and there have been just as many where I know he wanted to ring mine!

I didn't really mean for it to sound romantic, I meant it as - it doesn't feel like you are slaving away for another purpose, or spending time and energy for nothing. The more you "work" at a marriage, the stronger, happier and healthier it will be.

Of all of the above, the one I absolutley agree with is living on your own.

As for the rest -- all of the discussion, classes, experiences and all the others -- some will work for some couples and some won't.

How much have you changed in he past five to ten years? Do you think you'll stop changing now? When you get married? Don't you think those natural changes will sometimes be in opposition to all of those wonderful understandings and decisions you made prior to getting married?

To me, what makes marriages work or not work is a commitment to staying married. Nothing else. Not living together beforhand, not classes, no long talks into the night, not psychologists, not wealth, not romance -- nothing.

I've been married for almost thirty-five years, and at some points it has been really hard for innumerable reasons.

Fortunately, there have been good reasons to stay together as well.

While all of the ideas listed are good, not a single one of them will hold a marriage together without a solid commitment to the institution.

So, my suggestion of what to do before marriage is to mentally check your personal commitment to "Till death do we part."

Edited to add:

I'm not making a case for ABSOLUTE commitment. I don't think anyone should ever stay in an abusive marriage. But, at the moment although some could exist, I can't think of many more things that would shake that commitment.