Relationships: Mistakes Newlywed Couples Make
- 13 years ago
Relationshps: Mistakes Newlywed Couples Make - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.
Newlyweds make a number of mistakes right off that if you can keep an eye out for them it is going to make a big difference for you as your relationship builds. One of the first things is that people put the filter of their past relationships, and particularly their parents, on their partner. So you may, for example, expect your husband to behave like your dad did or to behave the opposite of your dad, but you have put the face of your dad on your partner. So letting yourself really look at this person as your partner, going forward, where you are going to be creating your unique relationship, then if something comes up from the past, especially something that feels familiar, where you say, "Hmm, gosh, I just heard myself sound like my mother" or "I just heard myself say something that my dad said and I thought I never would say that," you can communicate that to your partner and that way you can start letting go of the past that you might have carried into your relationship.
Another thing is to give yourself healthy doses of both being close and being separate. Newlyweds kind of, I think, get into the mythology that our culture has about "if you are together, you have to be together all the time, and if you want to have time for yourself, it means that there is something wrong with you or him or her or relationships in general." And healthy relationships really thrive on periods of you being interested in your own creative development and also times of being together with your partner. And if you will give yourself those times of being separate as well as being close, you can bring back what you have discovered in the world and what you have discovered in reading or being with other people and it will refresh and revitalize your marriage and keep your newlywed status going all the time.
One of the mistakes that I think that newlyweds also make is that they try to be perfect and do not let themselves instead get open to learning. You are going to make mistakes, you are going to hurt each other's feelings,you know, you are going to say something that you just cannot believe came out of your mouth, or you are going to try and improve your partner because a lot of people think that a marriage license is a license to improve your partner or change your partner. But if instead you let yourself really commit to being open to learning, that is a way that you can use each interaction to really keep discovering about yourself and about each other, and it creates variety in your relationship so that you do not get into patterns as quickly. It is amazing to see how quickly people get into patterns of expecting. For example, expecting dinner to be at the same time or for each of you to do certain roles that you might not have even talked about, but you just fall into them when you get into your marriage. So regular times of communicating to each other about what you are feeling and what you want can help take you out of that trap of getting into a rut with each other.
Newlyweds often fall into is not making their relationship primary. When you are a newlywed, you are usually in the context of your family - people who have supported you - and those relationships, transitioning from those into making your relationship the central relationship, is really the task of your first year of marriage so that you decide together how much time you want to spend with relatives, you decide together if one of you maybe wants to go home for Christmas. I remember that Gay and I did that in the first year of our being together. I wanted to go home to California - we lived in Colorado at the time, and I wanted to go home and be with my parents for Christmas - and Gay did not want to do that, and at first it was kind of shocking to me because I would come from that, you know, everybody gets together, all of the relatives get together at Christmas and so he went of to Big Sir to camp for Christmas, and I was with my parents, and what happened for that was so amazing to me that we were very happy to see each other again. He did not have to be around my parents, who were rather difficult, and when we got back together again, we had both had wonderful holidays.
So falling into rituals that you have not chosen is one of the traps that newlyweds can get into, and instead I really encourage you to create rituals that really nourish the both of you, whether it is - I was just thinking of Gay and I lying in a hammock. That was one of the rituals that we created in the first years of our marriage is taking time, at least two or three times a week, where we would lie in a hammock facing each other and we would just be together and kind of share what was coming up, and it became a wonderful ritual at the end of the day. So let yourself look out for those kinds of things you can do together that really feel nourishing and juicy to both of you, and let those rituals replace the ones that maybe you grew up with.
Newlyweds make a number of mistakes right off that if you can keep an eye out for them it is going to make a big difference for you as your relationship builds. One of the first things is that people put the filter of their past relationships, and particularly their parents, on their partner. So you may, for example, expect your husband to behave like your dad did or to behave the opposite of your dad, but you have put the face of your dad on your partner. So letting yourself really look at this person as your partner, going forward, where you are going to be creating your unique relationship, then if something comes up from the past, especially something that feels familiar, where you say, "Hmm, gosh, I just heard myself sound like my mother" or "I just heard myself say something that my dad said and I thought I never would say that," you can communicate that to your partner and that way you can start letting go of the past that you might have carried into your relationship.
Another thing is to give yourself healthy doses of both being close and being separate. Newlyweds kind of, I think, get into the mythology that our culture has about "if you are together, you have to be together all the time, and if you want to have time for yourself, it means that there is something wrong with you or him or her or relationships in general." And healthy relationships really thrive on periods of you being interested in your own creative development and also times of being together with your partner. And if you will give yourself those times of being separate as well as being close, you can bring back what you have discovered in the world and what you have discovered in reading or being with other people and it will refresh and revitalize your marriage and keep your newlywed status going all the time.
One of the mistakes that I think that newlyweds also make is that they try to be perfect and do not let themselves instead get open to learning. You are going to make mistakes, you are going to hurt each other's feelings,you know, you are going to say something that you just cannot believe came out of your mouth, or you are going to try and improve your partner because a lot of people think that a marriage license is a license to improve your partner or change your partner. But if instead you let yourself really commit to being open to learning, that is a way that you can use each interaction to really keep discovering about yourself and about each other, and it creates variety in your relationship so that you do not get into patterns as quickly. It is amazing to see how quickly people get into patterns of expecting. For example, expecting dinner to be at the same time or for each of you to do certain roles that you might not have even talked about, but you just fall into them when you get into your marriage. So regular times of communicating to each other about what you are feeling and what you want can help take you out of that trap of getting into a rut with each other.
Newlyweds often fall into is not making their relationship primary. When you are a newlywed, you are usually in the context of your family - people who have supported you - and those relationships, transitioning from those into making your relationship the central relationship, is really the task of your first year of marriage so that you decide together how much time you want to spend with relatives, you decide together if one of you maybe wants to go home for Christmas. I remember that Gay and I did that in the first year of our being together. I wanted to go home to California - we lived in Colorado at the time, and I wanted to go home and be with my parents for Christmas - and Gay did not want to do that, and at first it was kind of shocking to me because I would come from that, you know, everybody gets together, all of the relatives get together at Christmas and so he went of to Big Sir to camp for Christmas, and I was with my parents, and what happened for that was so amazing to me that we were very happy to see each other again. He did not have to be around my parents, who were rather difficult, and when we got back together again, we had both had wonderful holidays.
So falling into rituals that you have not chosen is one of the traps that newlyweds can get into, and instead I really encourage you to create rituals that really nourish the both of you, whether it is - I was just thinking of Gay and I lying in a hammock. That was one of the rituals that we created in the first years of our marriage is taking time, at least two or three times a week, where we would lie in a hammock facing each other and we would just be together and kind of share what was coming up, and it became a wonderful ritual at the end of the day. So let yourself look out for those kinds of things you can do together that really feel nourishing and juicy to both of you, and let those rituals replace the ones that maybe you grew up with.