Brides may face challenges in both the wedding process and the transition to married life, according to licensed marriage and family therapist, Glenna Garcia.
Some of the challenges young couples face arise from the fact that they do not consider financial expectations or long term friendships prior to getting married.
“So they bring in these friends that they have had for a long time and how do they incorporate that into their new lives as a married couple?” Garcia said. “Sometimes it is how do they incorporate their parents? How do they separate from parents and make adult decisions?”
Young couples are faced with decisions like moving, purchasing a home, and when to have children, and according to Garcia, they have to determine how they will make these decisions together.
She said young couples also often neglect to consider in advance how they are going to handle disagreements.
“All couples have times when they do not agree about things,” Garcia said. “When they don’t know how to talk about those things they can evolve quickly into a fight and then they don’t know how to resolve that argument.”
Young couples, like all couples who get married, merge their lives, family, friends, hobbies and interests and so it is important to talk about those things before the day of the wedding, Garcia said.
The age of technology brings unique issues to the marriage table.
“Sometimes you see couples out on a date and they are together but separate because they are on their phones,” Garcia said. “So we want to talk about what it means to be out on a date and how we are going to handle technology.”
Nontraditional brides face a lot of the same challenges as traditional brides but with the added challenges of blending families.
“Getting to know each other first is really important,” Garcia said.
It is important for couples bringing children into the marriage to understand that ultimatums in which a spouse must choose between a partner or a child do not work. “That is a no-win situation,” Garcia said.
Often with nontraditional marriages, former spouses are part of the equation.
“So there are ways that families can work together as a whole,” Garcia said. “There’s a lot of successful families out there where they are bringing in ex-wives and ex-husbands and all working together as a great family unit because they communicate well. They don’t make anyone choose one or the other but are choosing everyone.”
It is important that couples share date nights, but equally important Garcia said, is that family nights as well as “parent night with their child” are established.
“So that you still feel like there is that bond that happens with each parent and their children,” Garcia said.
