Family History

Whether we like it or not our family influences a lot of our decisions. Marriage is no acception, it's the way you process it that makes all the difference. Growing up in a lot of the relationships in my family have a lot of abuse, some related to drugs and some alcohol. My parents have both grown up in this type of environment and thanks to their determination for change my siblings and I didn't experience this first hand. I've seen success and failure within many marriages around me, thanks to my family I've learned what I want in my own marriage and what I don't. When getting ready to marry, my decision was based off of what I've seen and experienced through my own family.

I've learned not only the type of man I wanted to marry, but I learned what kind of marriage I want as well. I've learned that in a marriage both partners have to be constantly working towards a better marriage, that it's a covenant, not a contract. A covenant is something that I need to always remember, because I think this is what makes a difference when things get hard. If you remember that you've made a covenant and not a contract it's a little easier in my opinion. Knowing that I have made a covenant reminds me that I promised to be with my husband even in those difficult times where it seems as though it would just be easier to quit. Marriage today is but a simple contract that we can easily tear up when something happens that we don't like. If we make the promise to ourselves to remember that this is a sacred covenant than I truly believe that we will work harder on our marriages.