Marriage and the 'Single' Mentality

"You don't need to be on the save wavelength to succeed in marriage. You just need to be able to ride each other's waves."

~ Toni Sciarra Poynter, From This Day Forward: Meditations on the First Years of Marriage

For the last week, I have been hearing stories from associates on their marriages. Some things makes me laugh and others makes me cry. But in listening to the stories, the thought came to mind, 'Are we as the 21st century married couples respecting the fact that another person is involved, or do we want to have our cake and eat it too?'

I'm not talking about infidelity or anything of that sort, but the simple things. For example, when you were single, you didn't have to worry about whether you could splurge on a new pair of shoes, or an outfit, or even a vacation. Even if you did have a bill to pay, you could convince yourself that you could spend that money because guess what, Its YOURS!

When we were single, we could go out as much as we wanted, hang out as late as we wanted, and frankly, just did what we wanted to do because we did not have to answer or be responsible for anyone else but ourselves. Now that we are married, that attitude, that mentality has to be gone from our minds. We now have to communicate our various moves with our spouse. Even the things that we may not think is necessary to share with them, we must.

Your marriage is a companionship and you both must act and agree as one. For example, some friends ask you to go out Saturday evening. You run this by your spouse and they remind you of a family function that you both are suppose to attend. You then respond, by saying well, you don't need me anyway, you can go there for us. But you both have already agreed on going to the family function. You have now possibly left a scar with your spouse thinking their family and or plans for the both of you don't matter. Another example, you may still go out as often as you like whenever you like with out realizing the needs of your spouse and your family.

Now that we are married, we can no longer have the mental state of doing what we want when we want to and how we want to. We have to take our spouses feelings and thought into consideration. Marriage can not work with a 'Single' mentality.