Course Overview

• What you’re going to learn

Welcome to Marriage.com’s Pre-Marriage Course. This course will help you learn the skills required to build a happy and successful marriage.

• Why this course is important

The first thing we’ll look at is how to manage expectations and how setting shared goals can help you build your marriage. 

Then we’ll look at one of the most important aspects of any good relationship, communication. The course will help you develop great communication skills that will help your marriage for years to come. You’ll also discover how to successfully balance the role of being a partner while maintaining your individuality.

Finally, this course will help you understand your readiness for marriage and will empower you to plan the future with your partner.

• How you’ll feel once you’ve taken this course

By the end of the course, you’ll feel more prepared and confident in your relationship and the foundation you’ve laid for a successful marriage.

Get Ready

A healthy marriage is based on the pillars of great communication, sharing, and working together as a team. Having more clarity in the relationship means that you must define what you expect from each other by having open lines of communication. That’s why good communication skills are the secret of many happy marriages. 

It is also important to note that being married does not mean that you lose yourself in the relationship. It means that your partner respects you for who you are and you respect yourself by maintaining your individuality, even as you support each other in this beautiful journey called marriage.

Clear Expectations

One of the most important things you can do to have a healthy marriage is to begin with  clear expectations. In this chapter, we’ll discover why this matters and how to set them.

• What you’re going to learn

First, you’ll become aware of how clearly you have conveyed your expectations to your partner so far. You’ll learn what it means to define clear expectations, why this matters, and how to uncover hidden expectations.

• Why it’s important

Expectations are great when they are met. The problem is that sooner or later, they will not be met, and then you’re in trouble. The majority of marriages struggle or fail because of unmet expectations.

Healthy marriages have several things in common: 

• They tend to have realistic expectations for each person (e.g., my partner is only human and will make mistakes). 
• They tend to be resilient because they avoid getting stuck on unmet expectations. 
• They usually roll with the punches and see the difficulty in the marriage as a challenge to overcome rather than a sign of failure.

Healthy marriages tend to manage each person’s expectations.

• How you’ll feel when you’ve learned to manage expectations

Learning the art of managing expectations empowers you to feel more positive and in control of what happens in the relationship. It will make things crystal clear for you and your partner so that you can focus on other ways to build up your relationship.

Shared Goals

You can build a healthier marriage if you set shared goals as a couple. In this chapter, we’ll explore how to plan and execute this.

• What you’re going to learn

In this chapter, you'll learn the rules of engagement for setting shared goals and make a plan for what you want to achieve as a couple.

• Why it’s important

Setting shared relationship goals is essential for achieving what you hope to accomplish in your relationship.

• How you’ll feel when you’ve learned to have shared goals

Once you know how to set shared goals, you’ll feel more hopeful about the future of your relationship and about the future in general. By setting goals and defining expectations, you are one more step closer to building a great marriage.