What to do before saying I do - Christian counsellor urges persons to pray earnestly, deal with past hurts before taking the plunge
Published:Sunday | November 1, 2020 | 12:07 AMShanna Monteith - Sunday Gleaner Writer
While it is true that there is no perfect rubric to ensure a happy marriage, it cannot be denied that there are some things that should be put in place prior to tying the God-intended lifelong knot. In a recent presentation on ‘What to do before saying I do’ Christian counsellor Shaniese Laylor-Bogle outlined some of these key factors.
Among them were: ensuring you are bringing something substantial to the union, carefully assessing your motive, seeking God for the answer, setting priorities straight, getting to know yourself first, and resolving past hurts and traumas.
“Yes, the foundation must be love, commitment, forgiveness, communication, and so on, but we can save ourselves many unnecessary issues if we establish, before we get married, these other little nuggets we may have overlooked. I find that these points,when established before marriage and then continued to be built upon, will be very effective in cultivating a meaningful married life. It is important that, for your building to stand, you must have it structured on good grounds and strong foundation,” said Laylor-Bogle, who shared that she has been married for eight years.
Noting that she does not consider herself a marriage expert, she revealed mastering personal struggles has helped reignite the flames in her own marital relationship.
“It wasn’t always so, as I did not do some things that were absolutely necessary before getting married. Because of that, the intimacy and communication watered down in my relationship. For clarity, one of my roles is mental health advocacy. I am trained in trauma recovery and healing. But, before I got married, I did not resolve my past hurts and traumas. This affected my ability to relate to my partner and give of myself fully, because I was scarred emotionally. It also affected communication – I couldn’t express what I was feeling or what I wanted, and I wasn’t an effective listener. I have seen this play out over and over again, even in the lives of others I counsel re: trauma recovery. We must realise that it is imperative to deal with anger issues, unforgiveness, self-doubt, guilt and shame and other emotional baggage before getting married and expecting marriage to heal us,” she said.
The trauma recovery coach shared that people cannot serve from a broken place, and marriage requires selfless service.
Do not wait
She warned, “To wait until marriage to get certain things in order is to delay a marriage of purpose and will put your relationship at risk of separation. Do not set yourself up!”
Using her own experience as an example, Laylor-Bogle shared, “My husband and I love each other dearly, but we are not perfect. Yes, it is our desire to stay together, as our motive for marriage was to live a life for the glory of God, but we cannot live in denial that, if only we had done some things before ‘tying the knot’, some pains could have been avoided. Let’s look at even finances. We would have loved to put more deliberate actions into saving more before getting married, but that didn’t happen and our first few years as a married couple were extremely hard. Statistics show that lack of finances is the number one reason couple split up – not infidelity.”
“I know that no one set of suggestions fits all couples, as people do what works for them. But as a believer, a counsellor and a married woman, I can safely advise anyone wanting to be married to: pray earnestly about your desire, deal with your past hurts, learn to openly communicate (listening is a part of this process), be respectful, ensure your motives are right – marriage is a covenant and it’s forever. Work on forgiveness (if it’s a problem for you), work on your home-keeping skills, and keep up the spice in your relationship. If it’s your desire to stay married and please God no matter what, your union will last.”