Marriage Counseling, Part 4: Shared Vision

One of the biggest challenges in married life is the prioritizing of expenditures and the saving of money.  If there are not sufficient funds to pay the bills, if there is an illness that reduces income significantly, the loss of a job for no apparent reason, all of these things can disrupt an otherwise smoothly-flowing marriage.  The cure to these problems is having a shared vision of what you want your future to look like.  If the two of you know where you’re going, what you want in the way of life’s journey, a home, family, the type of occupation, and the recreational aspects of your lives, it can go a long way to helping you to adjust when the vision is disrupted for whatever reason.

Like all aspects of married life, being able to talk about what you want in life is of the greatest importance.  Before you get to the point of committing to each other, you need to come to an agreement about where you want your marriage to go.  Where will you live, both geographically and socially?  Do you want a large house with all sorts of luxuries?  Or are you more inclined to have an ecologically-based small home with nooks and crannies for organizing life on a small scale?  Do you want to live in the city or the country?  What kinds of vehicles do you want?  Children?  How many?  How do you prepare if a child has special needs?  Do you want pets?  What kind of hobbies or crafts would you like to pursue?  What does a typical day look like in your perfect lifestyle?  Try to envision exactly what you would like your life to be like.  Share your views with your partner.  Write a couple of pages about it or draw the images that are most important to you.

Having a shared vision, an idea of an endpoint for your marriage, can help smooth out the wrinkles that life challenges can place in your way.  Once you create your ideal roadmap, it is a simple matter to develop a Plan B, which includes your options when things don’t go according to your regular plans.  Give it some serious thought and have a strategy to put into place, including things like additional education when career changes come, specialized day care for special needs children, a smaller home than you initially envision should your income be restricted, and so forth. 

When you have a shared vision and the challenges manifest, you are prepared, rather than overwhelmed, and have a path that you can safely and sincerely travel, drawing you closer as you succeed in dealing with those challenges.