Importance of Self-Mastery before Marriage

Importance of Self-Mastery before Marriage:
Most people get married because, by default, we grow up, graduate from school, get a career, met the man or woman of our dreams and then there’s the engagement and marriage. If we live by default, we are leaving our future to chance when in fact, we are responsible to do our part to ensure that our future with our soon-to-be wife or husband is filled with positive learnings, growth and needless to say forgiveness, love and compassion.

In this blog, I would like to highlight that the majority of couples fail to see the importance of personal growth before even thinking about marriage. Personal growth is not often discussed before getting married or at least, it is not emphasised enough.

Imagine if we ourselves have a lot of issues and inner struggles that we have yet to deal with and we expect that our future spouse would be our magic cure in hopes that they would be ready to care for us and go through thick and thin together. Some of us may be struggling with persistent issues such as strained relationships with parents or other members of the family and some of us may be struggling at work with our bosses or colleagues.

Our spouse is not a trained therapist or counsellor and it is a huge responsibility to give to our spouse when they are not trained or equipped to handle our emotional outbursts.

Before we enter a marriage, it is our full responsibility that we do not bring our past struggles or unresolved baggage for our spouse to deal with. We can easily think of spending money on a honeymoon, a new matrimonial home and more and we fail to invest in ourselves to be a better version of ourselves for our life, one who is prepared to face the challenges that may arise in the marriage. I hate to break it to you that being married is a huge responsibility and commitment and it is harder without self-mastery. When you are madly in love with one another and have yet to share a life together for the long term, you may not think this way and it’s understandable that we want to think the best since deciding to marry is already a huge decision to make.

Here are the reasons why you may need to consider learning self-mastery before marriage:

You will learn to love yourself 

By learning how to love and care for yourself, you will be a natural when it comes to loving and caring for others especially when you plan to raise your own family.

You will resolve issues effectively 

Problems will always be there; if emotions are high, it’s hard to look at the issues objectively. With self-mastery, you will have the clarity to work things out together with your spouse and the chances of dragging the problem for weeks and months will be slimmer too. Oftentimes, it’s common for arguments to end up with prolonged silent treatment by one or the other.

You learn from mistakes faster

No doubt we make mistakes as human beings but sometimes, problems in the marriage persist because of the same mistakes being repeated over and over again. With self-mastery, when you and your spouse make mistakes, you learn from the mistakes fast and the chances of the same mistake happening repetitively will be slimmer too.

As a life coach, I hope that more couples have the awareness of why self-mastery is very important and should be included in pre-wedding planning. It will save you unnecessary tears and complications in your marriage.