7 Great Ways To Prepare For Marriage While You’re Still Single

To listen to the blog post “How To Prepare For A Healthy Marriage Before You Get Married” over reading it then click the play button down below. 

In this post, I am going to tell you how to prepare for marriage while you are still single and this should help you prevent a divorce in the future. AND NO, this is not some post about getting a prenup or legal advice.  As someone who has provided marital and premarital counseling what I am about to give you are things that I have noticed TIME AND TIME AGAIN.

When it comes to couples ready to get a divorce and sometimes they had only been married for a year. Give yourself the BEST chance at marriage by learning to avoid getting into a failed marriage. As it stands, the divorce rate in the United State is at about 50%, meaning that you should be willing to do anything and everything to make sure that when you get married that you give yourself the BEST chances of success.

You ready, let’s get into it.

1. How To Prepare For Marriage By Having Realistic Expectations

The first tip to prepare for marriage is to have realistic expectations. A common misconception of couples that I saw in counseling included them thinking that marriage will fix all the issues that are apparent in their relationship. Marriage will not FIX an already bad relationship.  It will only intensify it. So if you are getting married for any of the following reasons then DON’T it is a bad idea and you are setting yourself up for failure.

• Getting married to prevent him from cheating on you.

• Getting married because your relationship is on the rocks and you think marriage will fix it.

• Getting married to keep him from his baby’s mama.

• Getting married so that he will spend more time with you. 

• Getting married to stake your claim on him.

• Getting married because he wants you to even though you don’t really want to. 

• Getting married to cure his jealousy or your jealousy issues.

• Getting married because you think it will be easy to control him.

• Getting married to keep him from going out with his friends too much.

I think that you pretty much get the drift. If marriage is your cure to making a BAD relationship better then you are destined to fail. One of the best ways on how to prepare yourself for marriage is to have a realistic expectation of what marriage is.  Which I talk about below in my video, and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel by clicking here.

2. Prepare For Marriage ~ Know Who You Are Marrying

The second tip to prepare for marriage is to know who you are actually marrying. If you want to give your marriage the best chance of survival it is important to know who and what you are marrying. For example,  if the wife has an excessive spending habit that always keeps the bank account in the negative; that will continue in the marriage.  If the husband has an addiction to porn and chooses to watch it all day; that will come out and continue in the marriage.

If the husband does not have a job and does not want to get a job, he is not all of a sudden going to become a provider of the family just because you are married. If one person wants to have kids and the other does not; that is a BIG deal and will be a big deal once you are married. If he had children hidden in his back pocket along with other baby mamas that you don’t really know about that is a HUGE problem.

To remedy this issue you must pay attention in the dating or the engagement phase (see my blog here on questions you should be asking while engaged). You need to get to know someone, know their family, their friends, their credit report, background check, and all of that.  The last thing you want to do is end up on an episode of the show who the bleep did I marry because you got so caught up in getting married that you did not take the time to find out who this person really is.  Also, check out my video on what to look for in a good man.

3. How To Prepare For Marriage Stop Idolizing Marriage

Are you making marriage your idol?  I am going to take an excerpt from my book Fix It, Jesus! For Single Women Only. The Straightforward No-Nonsense Guide To Dating, Relationships, and Self Improvement  (which you can buy here) :

I used to counsel a young married couple who wanted to get a divorce after only six months of marriage. In fact, I do not think they really even loved each other. They met each other online through a dating app, within a few months they became engaged (because they wanted to be married so bad), a few months after that they spent thousands of dollars on a wedding and then six months later the wanted a divorce.

Want to know where this went wrong?

They just wanted a big wedding, a big honeymoon, and a big engagement ring. Once all of that was over then they were left with just themselves, and they realized that they did not know each other, they did not have anything in common, and most of all they did not want to be married to each other.

Once you are married, there is no more excitement and celebratory events surrounding your day-to-day marriage. People will not ask to see your engagement ring anymore, there is no wedding to plan and being married is your new normal. And you need to have a realistic expectation of what that your new normal looks like.

(PS, if you want to get the first chapter of my book for single women for free, then click here or the picture below).

Marriage is not going to be some 24-hour honeymoon where you just have sex with one another and smile in each other’s faces all day. Once the wedding is over no one is going to ask to see your engagement ring or about your dress, it will be you and your husband. So make sure you want to marry the man not the idea of marriage.

4. How To Prepare For Marriage ~ Stop Behaving Like You’re Still Single

As a single person, you can stay out all night, go on a trip, do what you want, and go where you want without having to ask permission from anyone.  As a married person, it is not like that.  Your spouse is an extension of you and so you must treat them as an extension of you, and this is where most people have a problem.

You are not single and you have joined yourself with another person.  You can no longer do what you want when you want.  Most people have a problem with this because they do not want to lose their individuality, they don’t want to ask their spouse if they can go out, they want to stay out all night, party, hang with their girlfriends, they want to spend money on what they want to spend money on and do what they want to do without having to check with anyone.  But that is what happens when you get married, you have to learn to compromise and function as a couple, not an individual.

 5. How To Prepare For Marriage Get Your Money Right

I have seen one person save up a lot of money and unwilling to spend their savings even if it is needed for the marriage. I have seen someone spend all the money without consulting their spouse. In a marriage, many people will still have the tendency to say “This is MY money, I earned it.” When in reality, it is the household’s money.

It does not matter who earned it, both people need to make the proper decision regarding money and this needs to be an open and honest conversation about how the money should be spent and saved as a couple.  If there are separate accounts, then an honest conversation needs to be had about it.  There should be no hiding money from one party nor should there be any spending of money or mismanagement of money.  Money should be a joint decision, you should talk about how to spend it, what to spend it on, and how to save it.

Money is very high on the list for the reason why people end up in a divorce. This is why this is something that should be sorted out (check out my are you ready to get married blog) and talked about before you get married. This is why I feel that when you are single you need to chase your purpose first and not the man.  The purpose will help you get your money right, your life right, and help you meet the right man.  Which I talk about in my video below.

6. How To Prepare For Marriage ~ Learn To Be Selfless 

Despite what you think marriage is about each person GIVING to the other person and not taking. Some married couples do not get the whole joining together part.  They want everything to be about what they want, what they don’t have, and what they want to do.  They want the whole marriage to be focused on them and their needs and if things are not about them then it doesn’t matter. If you do not want to do what they want to do or feel how they feel then they get mad.

If each person in the marriage is always thinking about themselves then that means they are not thinking about the other person and that is a recipe of disaster. When you are married you have to come to terms with the fact that you are not the most important person in your life anymore.  Your spouse is and when you have kids, your kids will be as well.  You must shift your mindset away from the “me” mentality and do things that are in the best interest of “us.”

7. How To Prepare For Marriage ~ Stop Being Fake

When you think of how to prepare for marriage think to just be yourself. This should probably be higher on the list because being fake is oh so common. I will never forget that as I was counseling a married couple they were both really unhappy with one another.  Both of them stated that the person they married was not who they thought they were marrying. Both admitted to pretending to be what they thought their partner wanted because they each wanted to get married.

I cannot emphasize this enough.  Be yourself! You want to marry someone who likes you for you, not a person that you pretended to be.  That person is not real. So unless you want to pretend to be someone else for the rest of your marriage (which is not going to happen) you will be unhappy.

Don’t pretend to be vegan if your not, don’t pretend to be Christian if your not, do not pretend to like the things that they like if you don’t. You can only pretend for so long and pretending to act like and do things that have no interest to you, you will drive yourself crazy after a while. Because you won’t be able to keep it up for the entire marriage.

For those who are single and who want to be married.  Do not be in a rush to get married have a level head and really think about what you are doing and if you are doing it responsibly.  Being impulsive about marriage will lead to you just marrying anyone.

Marriage is not the cure to your loneliness, depression, anxiety, or the fact that you just do not want to be single anymore.  Marrying the wrong person will only intensify these shortcomings.  If you know someone who may need to read this post then go ahead and share it with them.