Five Ways you can Improve your Marriageability
by Debbie Thompson
Advice on the cusp of my 40th wedding anniversary and in preparation for the second Wautoma Area Lutheran Singles Event: Feb 11, 2024. Limited space: 4 women and 4 men ages 21-30. Cost $35.00 (Dinner with the Dynamite Duo) email debbiethompson2635@gmail.com for more information or to reserve your spot.
Marriage requires verbal communication so you can practice expressing yourself without text abbreviations, emoticons and exclamation marks. Find real people to have real conversations about things other than football/hunting or decorating/ hair products. Find out what bores the opposite sex and then stop talking about it. Ladies, please stop the Disney princess lilt at the end of all your sentences. And Men, stop sighing when she does.
Marriage is a physical relationship so you can practice making yourself physically fit to enjoy and give enjoyment of this gift from God. This physical relationship is intended to result in children so Ladies, you will be well advised to fit your body and your mind to the requirements of child birth and the realities of that physical work. Men, you better get ready now to develop the character it takes to enjoy your little ones. That too is a physical effort. You have to get off the couch and turn off the media to help the little ones become people you’ll want to be around for the rest of your life.
Marriage involves spending lots of ordinary time doing ordinary things together and around one another so you can practice doing everything without complaining or arguing, doing everything well, as if you were doing it for the Lord.
Marriage involves shared financial goals so get your finances in order now. Practice staying within a reasonable budget which includes church, gifts, expenses, saving, and discretionary spending. Work at reducing your debt.
Marriage will test your character. Do you have any? Do you even know what it means to have good character? Nobody wants a lazy, boring, easily angered, know-it-all, old adolescent. Please learn to laugh. Stop blaming others for your problems and take action to become someone another person might want to be with for a lifetime.
Five Realities
You are not a prince/princess. You are an ordinary human looking for another ordinary human. You are not the star of your own movie looking for a prop. This is not ‘settling’. This is reality.
You are not supposed to change the world. You are not looking for another person who shares your exact vision of changing the world.
You do not need or even want to marry someone exactly like yourself who shares all of your current enthusiasms and interests. You do not want to marry yourself. When you look at your spouse you do not want to see yourself but him/her.
You are not sinless. You are not looking for a sinless spouse. You are forgiven by the Grace of God and no longer intentionally walking in the way of sinners or sitting in the seat of mockers. That is what you are looking for.
You have to build a life. It doesn’t look at the beginning as it will at the end. Envy is a sin
and envying those who already are married is a sin. Practice patient trust in God while expectantly looking for his provision for you in marriage.
For further reading, I recommend advice from 1913 found in “Don’ts for Wives” and Don’ts for Husbands”