Note: To read before the wedding
If you are 18 years old or approximately 18 today, my advice to you – do not rush to get married, do not be in a hurry because it would not be you to say a very popular phrase among divorced people in 5–10 years: "If I understood it then." It would be more logical and useful in order to reduce divorce – to allow marriage, for example, after 25 years, a kind of 25+ law. There would be of fewer mistakes. This sometimes affects not only those who say ‘marry me’ and those who say ‘I am getting married’, but also their parents. One girl's parents shared a similar situation that happened in their lives. Their daughter abruptly got married, and the parents were forced to take the credit for the wedding. After 3 months, their daughter said that she did not want to live with her husband; apparently very quickly she realized her mistake and divorced him. A year later, she got married for the second time, which means that she did not have enough time to make serious conclusions, but her parents still pay the loan with interest for the first wedding. These are the conflicts and interweaving: for the one person – getting experience from her mistakes, the other – paying for this experience. Although it is a weak argument, but still take care of your parents, please, do not do in your 18 what you need to do after growing up, at least beyond the equator of the third ten.
Should there be any standards in this matter of choosing a spouse? Do we all have to do this in an identical way, as we calculate the interest on loans, open a deposit in a bank or solve a mathematical problem "from point A to point B…"? The answer is very obvious. There should be no clear understanding of this issue.
So often there was an opinion when we talked with the girls at the stage of interviews and discussion of the topic: "Oh, and what, when I read, I will know everything and will choose the perfect husband? I wish it was so easy!"
We can confidently say: "Yes, you will choose a perfect husband for yourself with his ideal (for you) shortcomings, whom, firstly, you will know from A to Z, secondly, you will be morally ready for all his disadvantages, and the most important part – you have to try to raise the ideal man because it is most likely that the ‘ideal ones’ are few and they all are in the "red book".
Currently the statistics on marriages for women at 18 years has declined, for men it is less than 1 %. The highest percentage have girls who get married at the age of 20–25 years – about 40 %, i.e. about half of all girls try not to miss their chance and create a family in the first years of adult life – first years at work or as university students. Another 30 % – under the age of 30, and after 30 – every tenth person. So it turns out, you can not sit too long and wait too much. A hasty decision is also not good because your own world perception should be formed and it takes a time. Of course, there are also balanced marriages at an early age, for example – due to traditions, but if the situation allows then take 25 years as a reference point. It is not for nothing that statistics confirm our fears – that about 40 % of couples divorce due to the fact that at one time they made a hasty decision, registering a marriage. It also often happens under the pressure from relatives. Once again, we highlight – HASTY decision! So we should prepare according to the plan without ‘rush’.
Please, remember the statistics of divorces, it is worth repeating that those women who hurried to get married in their early ages in 60 % of cases do not marry anymore. So, every third «divorcee» will remain alone. This means that for every third woman the state "in search" will be for the rest of their lives. Do you want to be in such a long and fruitless search? And the search itself is not as terrible as the lack of implementation of women in all its manifestations. And what about the prospect of earning money and raising a child alone? What if there are two or three children? Every uncomplicated female fate shaves off all the girl's dreams of love and well-being of family everyday life. Let the statistics be your inhibiting argument for an early or hasty marriage.
Do not forget that after 35 years, the cause of female loneliness is a clear lack of men due to high mortality. And the other problem is that there is almost 15 million «army» of drug addicts, alcoholics, gambling addicts. They will skillfully hide their shortcomings, say that it is an accident or it was deep in the past. And a few million girls will believe them, marry them and have children with them…
11. Do not allow couples to go to the registry office if they
People just should not be allowed to go in the registry office (even to submit an application) in case they had never read such books. If I was there, I would give them a special, carefully prepared, test with questions right on the doorstep. How much do they know about each other? How many weaknesses have they noticed? What do they expect from each other? And if a young couple of two loving hearts scores few points – marching orders! They cannot go into. They cannot make such mistakes. Of course, it sounds categorically, but the reason for this – are endless successive failures and setbacks in choosing a husband.
Negative results of passing such a test would help young people at least to take a detached view. Whom have they chosen as a future husband or wife? Maybe it is not right decision at all or it is still very, very early to get married!
ONE OF THE GOALS OF THE BOOK IS TO GIVE YOUNG PEOPLE THE OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE A FRESH LOOK AT THE FUTURE SPOUSE, TO SEE HIM, TO UNDERSTAND HIS "INNER FILLING" AS FULLY AS POSSIBLE AT THIS POINT IN LIFE.
One of the goals of the book is to give young people the opportunity to take a fresh look at the future spouse, to see him, to understand his "inner filling" as fully as possible at this point in life. After all, there may be new habits and worse manifestations. Few people get better as the years go by because self-improvement is a real hard work to do. So that "it would not be tormenting painfully" for the unhappily lived years, so that your risks with this person were clear – what can he do that is not acceptable to you, in what ways are you not the same as he or she and what will you have to endure year after year. Knowing your risks, knowing what you have to put up with, – it would be much easier to take this path. Then you would not be strongly surprised, have a temper tantrum, pose the question point – black, complain to your friends or parents, and seek consolidation in wine, saying to yourself: "I wish I knew what he is like." Forewarned is forearmed for family life!
An even greater aim of our narration is to talk to adults who know life, who have experienced themselves in the marriage or in more marriages. The message is addressed to them – children need to be taught in the matter of choosing a second half. Adults have to talk with them, explain many issues, discuss their beliefs and hopes, and shape their views together, wisely directing from situation to situation. The analysis of current situations in the child's personal life or situations in the family is a great material for learning. For example, friendship with boys. Please try to discuss how the daughter sees her friend, how she evaluates his actions, whether she sees the reasons for such actions, especially bad or half-hearted. Even if your adult, personal experience in a relationship or marriage is negative or has brought disappointments, tell your child why and how did you make mistakes, why did you make wrong decisions, and what happened. The negative experience of parents will be the part which the child will try to avoid in his own life, especially if you talk about it and have a confidential communication with the child. Although in the interview, which we will soon move on to, there is an example of a daughter repeating the mistakes of a mother with an early pregnancy.
Can we imagine that parents would not teach a child to treat older people with respect? Just imagine for a second: a child, not knowing what to do, do not understand the situation when he or she sees an elderly person in a transport or other place, he/she just sits quietly, does not stand up for an old woman, for example. After all, the understanding that it is necessary to stand up, appears precisely because of a set of measures and actions in childhood. Parents always talk about this and make sure that the child does not violate these established norms in relation to older people. They set an example by their own actions, politeness to them in conversations, etc. The child absorbs this and acts in adult life in the same way independently. As a result, there is education – and also there is a result at its core.
FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED FOR FAMILY LIFE!
Now let's switch over to education, which is not yet available or sometimes it is practically absent. And if parents do not teach their children, then there is no result. How to find out what the person who is next to you is like, especially when you are in a relationship with him/ her? Parents often cannot teach, because no one has prepared them. Nobody told them they need to analyze every detail. What kind of things do you have to know in the pre-wedding relationship with the future spouse? Parents often have only their own negative experience. And do you know how many cases of several marriages and divorces are there? This shows the thorny path and the lack of the same set of measures that you need to teach your child. These divorces reveal clearly unacceptable character traits, habits, and shortcomings of the parent's own upbringing in order to maintain a happy family construction.
Young people need to understand this «science» before the wedding. They still have a chance to avoid mistakes, to part with their possible dangerous future, where divorces kill the naivety and euphoria of falling in love. And it will be also useful for the older generation to enroll and finish this life university for the sake of the happiness of their children and grandchildren.
In a good continuation of these questions, the child's upbringing should be boiled down to systematic conversations, analysis of actions, their reasons, criteria for family happiness, and the ability to evaluate a person in a relationship in a balanced way, compiling information of what is not even always visible or deliberately hidden. Such education, as well as its other directions, will be more successful if parents take care of each other every day. If parents are able to drop some voltage across their communication, sacrifice themselves for the sake of the second half in everything and in all the little things. It is noted that if you do not analyze with the child these beautiful manifestations of love in the form of parents' care for each other, or vice versa, negative manifestations, such moments may remain unnoticed until the child grows up and begins to understand the reasons for things. But it can take years, decades, in which your child will get his or her bumps and abrasions.
Funny stories are also suitable, especially if they remain in the memory as a stopper or a skew in the relationship. One of these cases occurred in Ukraine, when the mother of an 18-year-old girl tried to control every step of her daughter and exclude the continuation, in which only the skirt is mentioned from the girl's clothing (there is a proverb in Russia – to bring a child in the skirt/hem – which means to have a child before the wedding, it is always used in the negative meaning). The girl was going on a first date and could not help but tell her mother about it. And guess what! Her mother made the "only right" decision – she went on a date with her daughter! She wanted to look at the gentleman and to ask him to return her daughter home by the appointed time. The guy had no choice; he clearly remembered the eyes of the future potential mother-in-law, her possible reaction which would be like thunderstorm and lightning, if he was suddenly late for the appointed hour to bring the girl home. The hypothetical mother-in-law took another step on the next date, when the boy came for the girl to her home. She forced the guy to write an acknowledgement that he agrees to return her daughter by the time and not a minute later. The guy again lost the chance of choice, because he wrote and got a chance to date a girl, even under the hood of his mother-in-law. Their relationship soon ended when the guy casually told his mother that he had to write receipts for dates, and his mother was able to explain to him what lies ahead if the hypothetical mother-in-law becomes just a mother-in-law. It is funny and amusing, but when such ridiculous situations occur in real life, immediately there will be a clear assessment in the head – where and how quickly to run in similar or close cases.
One of the options for such communication with a child you will see a little later in communication with a first-grader. From an early age children should be taught how to pay attention to the people around them. Children should know how to choose a friend. It would be a good school of life. They will figure out why this or that girl or boy is behaving like this. And this makes sense only when children care about their toys, when they speak to us openly.
How can you teach a first-grade girl to understand which boy is next to her? Just ask her why she chose him over the others. Her answers will show exactly the reasons, and if she doesn't know why, then you need to ask the simplest leading questions and teach her to identify the reasons that attracted her to him, to friendship with him. Then you need to pitch upon each argument and reason. The next stage is the friend’s actions: whether he cares about one particular girl, whether he shows affection. Is he at least constant in his choice? Or he is a good friend of all girls in the group? Does not he offend girls or even beat? Is he interested in something? How does he speak to his parents? Is he obedient? Is he rude? Is he ready to give the last candy you?
Then you should teach your children how to juxtapose actions and words, so that the child could see the roots of selfishness, stupidity, greed, pride, and other points of weakness. On this thread of juxtaposition, bright and attractive beads will be made of kindness, responsiveness, dedication and other attractive aspects of human manifestation. Having formed in the child’s mind the habit of thinking and contemplating, looking into the roots of actions, reaching for those who will not betray, who are ready to live for the sake of another, the transition phase into adulthood will not be so "terrible".
I am convinced that most if not all of my readers are ready to challenge these statements, replace them with their own, expand the list or argue with the accuracy of the wording. For example, is it possible to calculate these risks? Is it possible to fully understand the person who is in front of you in the rose and candy stage? Who by the age of 18 is ready to listen to this and openly talk about it? People of age can say: "Remember yourself, did you listen to someone in your 18–20 years? And anyway, you don't need to teach me, I will figure it out myself!"
Here is one of these answers:
"This begs the question: why did you decide that you are smarter than anyone and that you can teach someone? Everyone has their own life and their own mistakes, and perhaps only after going through them, a person will understand the most important thing and what he needs."
Firstly, I will answer the last question – about 18–20 years. I didn't listen to anyone in my 18-s, because there was no one around who could tell me some useful information. There was nobody whom I could listen to, to whom I could openly talk about my ideas, how and whom to choose, which of the girls is more interesting to me and why I like her… We will get answers to the other questions in the future chapters through examples and descriptions. But the best way is when the reader will notice the logic himself or herself and will be able to foresee possible scenarios for development.
So, are you ready for family life today? You think so? In most cases – this is not the right answer, especially if you are not 30 yet, and you have not had to reason like this. Why?
Now please try to read carefully paragraph after paragraph and learn a new kind of art – the art of foreseeing your perspective in 5, 10 or more years in a relationship with the person you are in love now. Is this at least important or even possible? I am sure that the answer is YES. This way of thinking – like who is he, why does he do it, and how is he going to change his thoughts, actions, his behavior in the relationship with me over time – is not developed anywhere. Nobody told us about such things, we did not hear such examples. Sometimes we did not hear about it so often that we can think for ourselves.
12. First-grader love experience
I have recently heard from the first-grader Sashen’ka: “I love a boy”. I asked: “Does he know about it?” She said: “No”. “Do you think he is a good boy?” She said: “Yes”. I replied: “Why do you think so?” She told me: “I don't know”.
Do not you think that conversations with adult girls, their conversations with friends are the same?
– “Why do you love me?”
– “Oh, I don't know, but I feel like I am head over heels in love!”
There are two arguments that can justify a relationship with almost any man. The first – I do not know, and it turns out, I cannot explain why. And the second – I fell in love, which few people even try to understand and explain even to themselves – why?
Further, in the conversation with Sashen’ka, while I was getting more accurate information, I managed to direct her to think: what his features do you like, how does he differ from others, etc. Then the little girl was able to find three or four correct and useful characteristics of the boy she liked: kind, beautiful, gives her candy, helps at school.
A couple of weeks later, she shared her news again about the “love affairs”:
– “…And I stopped loving that boy, and now I love another” – she told me after a while.
– “Why?”
– “That guy talks all the time. He is like a chatterbox. So I stopped loving him.”
– “So you do not like that he talks a lot and does not listen to you?”
– “Yeah.”
– “So who is the new one?”
– “Andrey, he does not talk much and gave me a candy.”
We see the girl’s first steps of evaluating the actions. She noticed that she was not comfortable when the other person was not just a bit talkative. It is really not interesting when your opponent uses the formula 90 to 10, meaning that 90 % of the time he occupies with his conversations and you have only 10 %. Sashen’ka noticed the thing that many adult girls do not always have time to understand even before the wedding. The thing is that her future husband would completely fill the space with himself. Sasha made a new choice and felt that the gentleman who talks a blue streak less is better for her. And the fact that he gave her a candy made him a prince in her eyes.
It is not a big deal when we are talking about the first-grader. She has 10 years in reserve to learn many things about boys. But if you instill in her the practice of thinking, looking for motivation and evaluating actions, their constancy, and many other things and details, then she will be much better prepared for relationships, for the choices that most people make in the strangest, least practical way, as practice shows.
SASHA MADE A NEW CHOICE AND FELT THAT THE GENTLEMAN WHO TALKS A BLUE STREAK LESS IS BETTER FOR HER. AND THE FACT THAT HE GAVE HER A CANDY MADE HIM A PRINCE IN HER EYES.
The rule ‘a new guy should be not like the last one’ works for everyone who got burned on the shortcomings of the boyfriend before the wedding. It often happens in the same scenario after the next divorce. For example, the guy was greedy and did not give gifts, so the next one who is more generous will immediately get a fat plus in the rating. And being already married to the «generous» man, the girl discovers that he is rude with his generosity and is constantly terribly jealous. Of course, here are given the most primitive examples, but the point is to give some thought provoking issue: you have to remember when beginning a new relationship what you did not like in the previous one. And, please, do not forget to get the wind of him in all other aspects before the wedding, so that, running away from one disadvantage, you will not get stuck in five more unpleasant ones.
If only most girls and boys from childhood, from Sashen’ka's age had lessons in this issue – about boys, about how she understands them. Why does she fall in love with one or the other? I am sure that most readers had not such education. It was only slightly or not at all. Parents teach their child everything they consider important: to be honest, to respect their elders, to express themselves correctly and accurately, to behave in society, not to deceive, to be accurate, to achieve goals and to perform well at school. School has also many disciplines, including some important for the life ones. For example, there are such lessons as basics of life safety, arts and crafts, physical education.
There are no places (no special schools, courses) where young men and women (those who are ready for the marriage) can be enriched with knowledge of how to build the ‘right’ relationships, how to understand who they love, what family life really consists of and how to avoid mistakes when choosing a husband/ wife? There is no whole layer of education and training, even no one teaches basic knowledge of preparing a family, happy relationship in marriage.
How much time do you have? Maybe you are just preparing for a wedding and you are still reading, trying to find out whether you did everything right? Or you already live in a marriage and you have chosen your companion years ago. You have chosen him because of his beauty or sense of humor; maybe you liked him for fidelity or for a beautiful back. This also happens. You are not alone. There are plenty of similar stories. And some of them are collected in this book. Perhaps some of the readers all that is left to do is to educate their children that way, because their choice was made long time ago. They want their child to be more pragmatic in order not to repeat the mistakes of mom, dad, friends or relatives.
A simple analysis of the reasons for his actions, some life experience and facts surrounding us and also a desire to help at least a few people to learn and not to make rash steps before the wedding (steps which are based only on feelings, on the concupiscence) make me put letters into words in this book.
This issue is very extensive. There are many factors and components. It is difficult to conclude all the concepts and conditions within one or more sentences, or even one book. Therefore, I will try to tell you about the clearest, the most logical and most important things. This is not an axiom or a final conclusion in terms of the book. This cannot be taught. This cannot change all or many of those who read it. But even if a few people can think and contemplate afterwards, and one person does not make a rash choice of his/ her second half or somebody teaches his/ her children to be happier, then this work is not in vain.
This education must begin with the alphabet and cooked semolina for breakfast.
13. To love is to care
Our relationships are based on love, on the desire to be close, to stand together, especially at the stage of preparation and formation of a family, before the wedding. This is the euphoria of falling in love, when it seems that you just cannot breathe without this person, you cannot help thinking about him in delightful colors. You cannot concentrate on things you are doing, always distracting from everything else but him or her very easily. And vice versa, it is very difficult for you to return to other thoughts.
Unfortunately, experience has proven that all these feelings have an anti-mirror effect. It happens when the couple does their first steps in the family life. You do not look at your husband or wife and do not want to see him/ her, do not want to breathe near this person and cannot stop thinking about him/ her with irritation. You try to get away from these thoughts. You try to distract yourself with all known ways – drinking wine, having a new crush or a combination of these two. For somebody work is a way to escape the reality.