Fourth, discuss the impact of external influences on your marriage.

How much will you allow external influences to impose on and impact your marriage? Information needs to be disclosed about parents, siblings, children, and friends that you support financially. You should also discuss how much debt you are bringing into the relationship as well as your expectations on how your debt will factor into the combined family budget. It’s important to discuss these things early on to prevent conflict later.

Remember that your mate didn’t create your debt or cause the circumstances that left you the caretaker for your family member. Therefore, you must respect and listen to their concerns about how these things will impact their financial future. Make an earnest effort to put yourself in their shoes to understand their feelings, fears, and concerns when working to devise a plan of action.

Last but certainly not least, incorporate time to individually refresh and stay connected as a couple.

It is important that each person be allowed some alone time. This means working out a schedule that allow each of you to engage in a hobby, spend time with friends, or simply time to take a long bath and read a book. This will do wonders for your relationship. You should also plan time daily to connect with each other without children, television, cellphones, or laptops. You need time to unplug from the world and plug into each other.

This will ensure that you give one another the time needed to maintain a healthy intimate relationship. You must also make it a point to schedule date nights and small getaways. Even if your budget only allows you to send the kids and the pets to granny’s house for the weekend, use that time to stay at home and enjoy each other. Staying connected is absolutely vital to the success of a relationship.

Doing these things will help to ensure that you are prepared to win in your marriage once the rose colored glasses of lust and new love have been removed.

BMWK, Are you willing to do all these things to make your marriage stronger?