You don’t know what you really want until you experience it firsthand. But when you want to be married, how in the world do you prepare for it without compromising your standards? I recently learned a few valuable lessons (in a crash course) about what it’s like to be a wife—sometimes.
No – marriage is not all about date nights, someone to cuddle with every night, or rubbing your feet after a long day at work. Those are some of the perks, but not the work!
For the woman who has never been married, who is used to her own space, who works hard for hers and who is a giving person, you can learn a lot from having quality male platonic friendships.
Read: Singles; How I Prepared Myself to Be a Wife—and You’ll Never Guess Who Helped
Recently, I spent some quality time with one of my best male friends who came to town for the weekend. And I learned several lessons that helped me see marriage from a practical point of view that I’ll share with you.
Patience takes practice
One of the biggest lessons for me that weekend was on patience. We saw each other’s angry-while-hungry sides. We waited on one another to get ready for the day. And I kept up with being a good hostess during our adventure in the city.
He really worked my nerves!
I don’t know how married women do it, but I needed to see the realities of experiencing life with other people…and more specifically, the opposite sex. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely irked him too with my own quirks and habits. But at the end of the day, that’s real life and it’s often not on our expectations list for marriage.
Lesson Learned: Patience is one of the greatest things to practice and use in your single season and beyond. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit, a quality of the Lord that can truly express your love for the other person. Patience looks over those minor irks and allows you to see the bigger picture than what’s driving your emotions in the current moment.
Compromising is key
When it comes to compromising in a relationship, you will run into times when you have to choose between what you want and what’s best for the both of you. In the case of this weekend with my friend, I had the choice to do something I really wanted to do. But instead, I used wisdom and moved it to the next day.
Did the world end?
No. Did I get to do what I wanted the next day? Yes, and with more time than what I would have had to work with the day before. The point of this is that we have to use wisdom with our time and how we spend it with our partner. I’m big on quality time, so we were able to see a movie (his idea) and the next day visit an exhibit (my idea). We both won! No arguments necessary.
Lesson Learn: Kill the pride within you that suggests that everything has to go the way you say it should and when you want it to. That’s cute when you’re single. But it’s demanding, selfish and borderline manipulative when you’re in a relationship. That compromise exercise reminded me to do my part to make my spouse happy and he would do the same for me; that way everyone wins!
Know when and how to say things that bug you
I am not a confrontational person at all, so I can go the passive-aggressive route most times and even let things stir silently within me. It was helpful to have a male friend around to openly share what was bothering me about him without cutting him with my words. We had a transparent conversation and it was refreshing to be able to say what I needed to say as well as express my feelings. You don’t want to be in a relationship or marriage that limits your ability to be yourself. It helped remove any seeds of resentment from being planted in my heart and causing communication issues down the line for us.
Lesson Learned: When you pray to be prepared for your next season, be open to the different ways that God will prepare you! You may think you’ll learn one way and then God gives you a test. I wasn’t expecting to go through these recent tests of my patience, compromise and communication, but it was worth it.
Ladies, get ready and pass these tests as you prepare for your next season in your love journey.
Hey BMWK fam, what have your opposite sex friendships taught you about being married?