Considering marriage? Use this article as a checklist to ensure you’re truly ready for marriage. While being deeply in love with your partner is important, there are certain relationship tests that are crucial for a lasting and fulfilling marriage.
Love alone might not be enough to guarantee a long and happy union. But don’t worry; over time, many couples successfully navigate these milestones. Keep reading to discover what these essential relationship tests are.
Here’s a quick overview of the 9 relationship tests to consider before marriage:
- Monetary Crisis: Financial Resilience – Test your partnership’s ability to handle financial ups and downs together.
- Trust Test: Trust Assessment – Evaluate mutual trust in varying situations, as it’s foundational for marriage.
- One-Month Living Together: Cohabitation Trial – Spend extended time together, like a long vacation, to understand daily life dynamics.
- Living with a Family Member: Family Integration – Observe your partner’s interaction and adaptability with your family during extended visits.
- 1-Week Bad Mood Test: Mood Management – Assess how both partners handle and support each other during periods of bad moods.
- 2-Week of No Intimacy Test: Intimacy Pause – Determine the relationship’s strength and communication during times without physical intimacy.
- Long Distance: Distance Dynamics – Experience and evaluate how the relationship fares during periods of physical separation.
- Teamwork Test: Support System – Ensure both partners can support and uplift each other, understanding individual support needs.
- Solving Disagreements: Conflict Resolution – Practice and understand methods of resolving disagreements, essential for a healthy marriage.
Now, let’s dive deeper into each section.
1. Navigating Financial Crises.
Financial instability is something no one wishes for, but it’s important to know how to handle it within your relationship. Life is unpredictable; you might find yourself in a situation where you lose your job or can’t contribute financially as before. How will you handle expenses for outings or dates? More importantly, how will your partner react to monetary ups and downs?
Don’t wait for a crisis to strike. Proactively engage in a role-play scenario with your partner and discuss this potential situation. Observe their reaction. Are they supportive and understanding? Do they help brainstorm solutions? If so, they’ve demonstrated the ability to stand by your side during financial ups and downs.
2. Testing Trust.
Testing the trust in your relationship is crucial because once you’re married, there’s no going back. Don’t make the mistake of marrying someone you can’t fully trust. Find or create a situation to test the level of trust your partner has in you, and vice versa.
For example, a long-time friend asks to stay at your place for a couple of nights. Your partner should trust you enough to handle this situation appropriately if they want to spend their life with you. If they show distrust, then they haven’t passed the test.
Remember, trust is a two-way street. The next time you feel a bit jealous, take a moment to reflect on your reactions. Trusting each other is fundamental for a successful marriage.
3. One-Month Living Together Trial.
This doesn’t mean renting an apartment for a year and trying it out for a month; that’s not practical. Instead, look for opportunities that simulate living together for an extended period, like a long vacation. If there’s a chance to travel together for 2-4 weeks, grab it.
This experience lets you see what it’s like to be with your partner around the clock and understand their habits and behaviors. Remember, traveling can be stressful, and you might face challenges you wouldn’t normally encounter.
While this isn’t an exact representation of everyday living, it gives you insight into how your partner handles stress, especially during travel. This is valuable, considering you’ll likely continue traveling together after marriage.
4. Living With a Family Member.
It’s crucial for your partner to experience what it’s like living with someone from your family, particularly immediate family members. If there’s an opportunity to travel with your family and your partner, use this time to observe how well they get along during extended periods together and to identify potential conflicts.
Alternatively, if you’re already cohabitating with your partner, consider inviting a family member to stay with you for 2-4 weeks. This duration allows your partner to genuinely understand what living with your family is like. You can’t predict when a family member might need support, so it’s important to know how your partner interacts with them, as well as their overall attitude towards you and your family.
Don’t expect perfection; it’s unrealistic. The key is that everyone gets along and shows respect, despite any disagreements or inconveniences that may arise.
5. 1-Week Bad Mood Test.
Everyone has bad moods occasionally, and it’s important to know how your partner handles them. Consider a week when everything goes wrong: a rough time at work, hitting all the red lights, and nothing feels right. You’re in a bad mood and not the most pleasant person to be around.
When you’re married, you need to navigate these times together. It’s crucial to experience not only your partner in a terrible mood but also how they deal with you when you’re in a bad mood. Sometimes this involves giving each other space, and other times it requires extra patience.
6. 2-Week No Intimacy Test.
Physical intimacy is an important aspect of a relationship, and it’s common for couples to be intimate several times a week. However, it’s equally important to be comfortable with periods of no intimacy. Life as a married couple will inevitably include times when one or both partners are too tired, too busy, or simply not in sync, making intimacy less frequent.
Periods lacking intimacy can lead to minor disputes and moodiness, so it’s essential to understand how you both handle these phases before getting married.
7. Managing Long Distance.
Before getting married, it’s crucial to know how well you both can handle time apart. While ideally, you’d go on vacations together, there might be occasions where you have to be long distance for a week or more. Understanding how this feels and how to navigate it is important.
Different couples have varying levels of comfort with distance. For instance, one of you might have a bachelor or bachelorette party out of town, or there could be a destination wedding one of you can’t attend due to work commitments.
Although it might not be frequent, spending time apart is a possibility. Take the opportunity to experience what long-distance is like and evaluate how you function as a couple during these times.
8. Teamwork Test.
Marriage signifies becoming part of a team. You become each other’s primary support system, facing obstacles together. Before getting married, ensure you can provide that support to your partner, and they can reciprocate in the way you need.
Effective teamwork might require communication and adjustments, as support needs can vary from person to person. This is all part of the teamwork test, ensuring that both of you are ready to support each other in the ways required.
9. Solving Disagreements.
Understanding how to resolve disagreements in your relationship is critical before marriage. It’s even more crucial to know how to handle conflicts of varying severity. There will be disagreements that might momentarily make you question your relationship, but it’s important to remember that such feelings should be fleeting, not acted upon.
Some couples have a pattern of breaking up after every argument and reconciling weeks later.
However, in marriage, you can’t resort to divorce every time something goes awry. Working through issues and finding solutions is key. If you’ve been together for a long time, you might already be adept at this.
But if your relationship is new or you’ve never faced significant challenges, it’s vital to either wait for a real situation to arise or create hypothetical scenarios with your partner to practice conflict resolution.
In conclusion, marriage is a complex journey, and so are these tests. However, it’s important to remember that you don’t need to have everything figured out immediately. Take your time and aim to pass most, if not all, of these tests before committing to a lifelong partnership. Patience and understanding in this process can lay a strong foundation for a healthy and enduring marriage.
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