People are so quick to get married without thinking of the long terms of things.

In a small fragment of your life you may feel like you are in love and that you are with the only person for you and countless times you have ran it over and over in your head that there is nowhere you'd rather be and with no one else. But a few years ago down the road and what seemed like a never ending honeymoon is now filled with drinks and broken dishes every night. Hours of screaming and threats without hesitation or reason. Many married couples raise a family and tear it apart in the same decade. 



What I want to bring to attention are things people should consider and question before getting married and even having children. I'm not telling you how to live your life, but what I am saying are things that can't hurt you to consider in life wherever your path leads you.



Date.

How many times did your parents tell you to slow things down and take things easy with a partner? Do you ever feel like maybe things are just progressing too fast. How much do you know about the person you claim to love? Are you sure it's not temporary infatuation? Before rushing into things and giving away every portion of yourself to another person, I feel that it is very necessary to spend some time just dating. Spend time together, genuine time together without your phones, outside of the movie theaters and away from the sex. Find out how compatible your personalities are and if there is good synergy with basic activities, groups of friends and family, public areas and also private areas. 



Living Together.

They say you don't know a person unless you've lived with them. I wouldn't suggest immediately moving into an apartment or house with someone you're dating right away but before you consider the chapter of marriage, I would definitely suggest living together to test the water. You will both have pet peeves and you need to find out what each others are and how much you can handle before you settle for someone you grow to hate. These things that bother you about the person, are they worth setting aside to make room for more love? Or are they unbearable? You don't want to get married to someone you can't stand to live with. Marriage isn't just a choice, it's a contract.



Get Engaged & Continue Dating.

When you and your partner feel like you've spent plenty of time dating and you're ready to start the next chapter by getting married or starting a family, get engaged. When you're engaged don't put your relationship on hold. Yes, you will be busy planning the wedding and setting things up but you still need to continue dating and bonding and growing together. The moment you both decided that this was "it" one person can't do it all. It takes two to tango. So when you put those rings on your finger to share with the world that you are each others significant other and foundation/stronghold, you must support and lift each other up and develop together in everything that you do. I feel like once people have marriage on their to-do list, they set everything else aside and they forget to be well...human. Take time for yourselves and each other together. Reunite with family and friends from school/work. Continue to learn and grow and expand your horizons. Always make it a goal to better who you are as a person so that your significant other can continue to learn and love you and become a better person as well by example and experience.



Marriage.

When you get married and you've settled down, remind yourself that this is forever. The title and imagery of marriage is a strong bond between two people who love each other. But realistically it is a legal contract in which two individuals share everything and promise to each other that they will be together forever, will take care of each other & do what's best for their children etc... Often, you will see people get married and they think they're ready to get married but they failed to do the previous things mentioned and end up getting a divorce. I feel like these people are so eager to move through life that they run out the door before they've even put their shoes on. And they tell themselves and everyone else don't worry, my shoes are tied but then they trip and fall on their face. I have friends who have been married 3 - 4 times and each time they start dating someone, claim that they're in love and the next time I check on them, they're engaged or married again. Can we seriously just stop for a minute, breathe and live a little before hopping on the train?!? 



Marriage to me should be a bond between two people who love each other and care about each other. You want to support and strengthen each other and if the relationship goes sour you figure something out to make it better. If you truly love the person you have sworn an oath to, you will make sacrifice, compromise and changes to benefit the person you love. And if they genuinely love you, they will do the same. There is a middle ground and your love for each other will prove if you both are strong enough to find your way there. Once you've been to hell and back and can start anew, from there you can continue walking forward together and will perhaps rekindle your love and fall in love again.

These things don't just happen in movies. And someone doesn't need to die or threaten to leave you for it to work either.



Children.

First I would like to point out that you can have children with or without being married. It happens all the time. If you do not have a steady income or a reliable support system for a baby/child, I would advise you to NOT have children. Babysit your friends children of various ages and behaviors to "test" children out to decide if that is something you truly want and can handle. Don't act reckless and get knocked up just because sex feels good. If that is your mentality, you're retarded. Now, I'm not trying to shame teen moms or anything. Sometimes accidents happen and other times girls are just stupid. Sometimes girls are confident enough and eager enough to have children at a younger age than others so that's what they do. It won't "ruin" your life but I will say that it does make your life more difficult. If you can handle those struggles and challenges, be my guest. But challenges aside, if you plan on having children please try to be the responsible adult who has a job, family and friends who can help take care of and babysit your children. If you aren't married, that's fine. If you are married, that's fine as well. A lot of people choose to wait to have kids until they're married so that they can raise their baby together. Some people get married to people who already have kids and some people choose not to have kids period. There's no "right or wrong" here. But what I will say is that if you get married and you have children if you were to decide to get a divorce, everything that you swore an oath to has now been burned to ashes.



Divorce.

I get it that sometimes things just don't work out. Maybe you were married for 10 years and you realize that you're both in love with other people and you're miserable together so you'd rather just split up and start your lives over with the people you want. Humans naturally seek social interaction with multiple individuals and it's only natural for people to get tired of other people and interested/excited about others. If you are someone who can't stay in a happy home for a long period of time, I would suggest  you avoid getting married. What I mean by happy home is if you can't be in a committed relationship for a long period of time or at all in general, don't get married. If you're better at being single or just casually dating, just stick to that unless you are serious about settling down for the ONE. If you are married and you're questioning divorce try to figure out if divorce is truly the right option for you and the other person. If you guys are fighting over petty teenager things, I think you guys should put on your big boy pants and work things out like an adult should. If you're abusive towards each other or your kids, then yes... perhaps a divorce is a good idea and the abusive parties should seek help. If you have kids, I would consider holding the marriage together as long as possible for the sake of giving the kids a strong family to lean on. Once they grow up and can fend for themselves, then consider a divorce. But honestly, if you can stick together for a child from age 1- 18, you might as well just hold out till you guys die. Just saying. Adults think of how the divorce will affect them, their job, their income, their living situations, their assets and they do think of how they're going to share the kid if they're going to share the kid. Do parents ever ask the kid what the kid wants? What is best for the kid and not for our own individual selfish desires? Do you ever wonder how divorce messes with a kids perspective on life, on YOU, on themselves and what they'll grow to believe and feel and how they think they should act and become when they're an adult. If a child sees that hitting someone is okay they will grow up to hit their children because they have it etched into their memory that it is okay. So if a child sees their parents get divorced, getting divorced themselves as an adult doesn't seem like such a bad thing. Divorce is such a common thing just like marriage. One person gets married and another just got divorced.



So with that in mind, if people are so quick to get married and divorced then what is the point of doing either? To avoid getting a divorce, don't get married. That's my mentality.



My boyfriend and I have been dating for well over 5 years now. The topic of marriage and children have come up and we've been living together for 4 out of 5 years so we definitely know how each other is and what each others pet peeves are. We've also come to realize that married life would change absolutely nothing from our current life. We would literally be spending money to sign a paper that doesn't need to be signed for any reason. When I think of marriage, the whole wedding and being a bride and selecting special girls to be at my side etc... is exciting. I mean, I would love feeling like a queen or princess in a gorgeous white dress with my hair done perfectly. I would want my future husbands jaw to drop and I would want every guy friend of mine to be jealous of him because he will be the only person who gets to have me. I don't have a father in my life, but my uncle would take his place in walking me down the aisle and I can't imagine what a honor that would be for him and how proud of me he would be. I would love to see the smile on my mothers face, my grand mothers face, my sister and all of my aunts and friends. All of those special emotions and photos and memories to share all seem really amazing. However, all of that happens in literally one day. And then it's over. All of those things go on for one day and then we might spend a week on a vacation and then we go back to our every day lives like it never happened. To me, experiencing that small fragment of time is not worth it. If I wanted to see all of my family and feel special and show them how special they are to me, I would just go to a family event and be like hey, I love you. I don't really put icing on the cake in my life. I say things and do things how they are. I have my priorities set in my life and if something doesn't really fit the mold for it, then it just doesn't happen or I just don't care about it. I'm pretty laid back and careless about a lot of things. You could dump mud onto my brand new shoes and I'd be like kay, I'll just wash em later, whatevz. Working. Gaming. Eating. Sleeping. Are my priorities. My boyfriend is meshed between all of those things because we do those together for the most part. Marriage would be viable for us. We've spent plenty of time dating and living together so naturally it would make sense to get engaged and then a year or two later get married. I don't see us breaking up any time soon and I imagine that if we ended up taking the steps necessary to get married after all of this time, it would be for real and final. If I ever get married, I refuse to get divorced. So if I get married, I want to make sure that 100% in my heart I will never "want" or "need" to divorce the person I choose to marry. Do I want to marry my boyfriend? I don't know. When he asked me if I wanted to get married, my answer was I don't know, maybe. Deep down in my heart I do want to get married, but all of these uncertainties, doubts and possibilities stop me from quickly jumping onto the yes train. It's not that I don't love him, I don't see the benefits from marriage. I only see the constraints and nightmares. Maybe it's because my parents are divorced. Maybe it's because tv shows, movies and my friends all strengthen my feelings about it. I don't know.



All I know is that if marriage became a thing on my to-do list, I would not rush into it. I would not be careless about it. I would take it seriously and I would try to nourish the relationship as much as I could before calling it quits and walking away.