What Not to Do if You Want a Successful Marriage

Now that the wedding is over and your marriage has begun, you might wonder what it is that keeps couples together. Well, the truth is that every couple is different and there is no right or wrong answer. What works for your friends and family might not work for you. While we can’t tell you what to do to make your marriage work, we can give you some tips regarding what not to do to help your marriage get off on the right foot.

Don’t Go Into Debt

Of course you want your wedding to be the most amazingly beautiful day of your life, as it should be. However, if you cannot afford to splurge on an open bar or the location you’ve been dreaming of since you were a little girl; don’t. The last thing you want to do is go into marriage with mounds of debt that you accumulated paying for your dream wedding. Your wedding is one day; your marriage and your debt will last a lot longer.

Don’t Keep Score

In the grand scheme of life, does it really matter if your husband was right three times last week and you were wrong? It really doesn’t. The only thing keeping score does it make your marriage into a competition, which it is not. It’s fun to be right, but it’s more fun to be happy; and keeping score is not going to make you happy.

Don’t Make Assumptions

Marriage is not perfect and if you go into it thinking that it is, you are in trouble. Believe me when I say that many couples are extremely happy together, but it does take work. It takes effort to remember to show your spouse you love him after all these years and to remember that just because he’s yours doesn’t mean you need to stop winning him over. I love my husband to the moon and back, but sometimes he makes me feel that I’m a single mom with three kids (he’s the third) and he makes me crazy. At the end of the day I love this about him, but it’s just a reminder of the fact that marriage is not perfect and it does take work, commitment, time, love and (a lot of) patience.