Marriage mistakes to avoid

You’re married! Congrats! Now let’s talk about the four biggest marriage mistakes not to make during your first married year. My husband and I are newlyweds and we have friends who are newlyweds. We’ve made some of these marriage mistakes and learned from friends who have made others. We are still very happily married, but your first year of marriage can be a lot easier if you avoid these four simple mistakes.

Mistake 1:

Adding extra unnecessary stress. Let’s get a puppy. Let’s buy a house that needs renovations and live with family while it takes way longer than expected to renovate. Do these seem like good ideas? No! Your first year of marriage should be a time to get to know each other even more than you already do, to spend time together, and to relax and enjoy the ride. Your sources of stress might be different from ours, but think twice before adding unnecessary stress. Now, I love our puppy, our house turned out beautifully, and I am so thankful that we had family who let us live with them for over 11 weeks, but we could have waited and not done all of the stressful things at once. We could have avoided the extra stress and just enjoyed relaxation in the post-wedding planning days.

This also includes not rushing to have a baby unless you are sure you are ready. Don’t feel pressure to hurry your life along. If you want to start trying to have a baby, go right ahead, but don’t do it just because other people have started asking when you will have kids. It’s ok to take a year to enjoy each other’s company without kids. It’s also ok to not want kids. You do what is best for you, but only add good stress to your first year of marriage.

Mistake 2:

Overspending; especially if it means going into or further into credit card debt. Now that you’re married you might feel like there are different expectations. Your college furniture suddenly seems unacceptable, your car not nice enough, or your clothes not fancy enough. You should not compare yourself to others. The person next door with the really nice car may be drowning in debt and the family on the other side with the really old sedan could be debt free. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and you shouldn’t make financial assumptions based on what you see. Now I completely understand wanting to upgrade some things, but make sure that you can afford to do it. When you overspend it creates even more pressure and stress and instead of you being happy about your nice new toy you feel stress about how to make the payments. You should not let where you think you should be in life dictate how you live. You need to use where you actually are to make decisions. Just because you thought you’d have a brand new car once you got married does not mean you should buy one if you truly can’t afford it.

Mistake 3:

Feeling like you have to see every side of the family for every holiday. Let’s face it, holiday plans can be tough, especially for newlyweds, especially when there are multiple people all hoping you’ll celebrate with them. In the past you might have celebrated Thanksgiving, for example, both with your Mom’s side of the family and with your Dad’s side. Now that you’re married, you likely have at least twice as many sides of the family to juggle. If you try to see all of the family on Thanksgiving, you’ll attend 4 different celebrations, probably spend a ton of time driving and not actually being with relatives, and likely overwhelm yourself.

As hard as it is to narrow it down, for your sanity and for the sake of actually enjoying the holiday you definitely should. There are two main ways to do this. One is to consider celebrating on a day other than the actual holiday. Utilizing the weekends before and after the holiday can be a great way to see your family, celebrate with more people, and not make yourself crazy trying to visit everyone in one day. The second way is to take turns. This can either be by you and your spouse dividing up the holidays and deciding whose family you will spend each with or even by alternating. It may take relatives a while to get used to not seeing you at every gathering, but they probably understand. If they’re married, they know how hard it can be to balance the entire family and should respect your decision to make a holiday schedule that will make you and your partner both happy and able to enjoy the day.

Mistake 4:

Not making each other a priority. On the surface, this one sounds especially horrible. When you think about it though, you probably live together now and likely at least one of you has a job, and suddenly life gets busy and things just happen. Since you see each other daily, you’re automatically prioritizing each other, right? Wrong. When was the last time you went on a date? Like a real date? Or even put your phones down for an entire meal? It’s important to take time with each other and make sure that you are priorities to each other. Not sure how to go on a date while on a budget? Here are some budget date ideas. Dates do not need to break the bank, they just mean to give you time together to continue growing your relationship.

Your first year as a married couple is bound to have its ups and downs no matter how long you’ve been together. It takes a while to get a joint routine down and function efficiently as a team. By avoiding these four marriage mistakes, you can help the first year of marriage go as smoothly as possible. If you’ve made any of these mistakes, don’t panic, pretty much everyone else has too. It doesn’t mean your relationship is over; it’s just easier if you avoid these marriage mistakes when possible and work on them when you recognize them.