Transitions in Marriage and having children

This week in class, I learned so much that I had never even thought about before. One thing I had never thought about before was how important engagement is. It is the step after courting and the step before marriage. While you are engaged it is not the job of the girl to be planning the wedding with her mom and sisters. It is so important for the fiancé to be involved and saying what he likes and dislikes and helping the wife. In the engagement part of a relationship you can learn so much about your fiancé that will change how your marriage will be. I had never thought how important it was that  the male asked the father's permission or how the guy asking the girl to marry him was so important but now I know that it is so important because it shows how the guy is willing to commit and how your marriage will end up.
  This week we talked about how you will change in the first month of marriage and the first year of marriage and when you have your first baby. There is going to be a lot of change and a lot of decision making in the first month and you want your fiancé to be a part of it. Today in class we talked about how important it was for the man to help the women in creating their house and the decor that they use. It was interesting to hear people's comments on how the women should just be doing the work and the husband can just go along with it. Guys, this is NOT how you do it. Women value your opinion and we would rather you tell us you don't like something before we decorate a room then us finding out you hate it after we are done. You are a TEAM when you get married, it is not up to the wife to make all the decisions or up to the husband to make all of the decisions, you make them together.
  It is proven that when married couples start having children their marital satisfaction is decreased. This is due to many reasons, some being that the wife is more focused on the baby than on her husband, the work load of the wife and husband go up, they couple stops going on dates or having time for each other. It is so important for the wife to include the husband in having and raising a child. When the husband feels connected to both the wife and the child the satisfaction rate goes up and they are all more happier. There are many ways a wife can include her husband, such as having him at every doctors appointment, having him help with decisions about the baby, being the only one in the delivery room with her, etc.
  There was so much that I learned this week that I could probably write an essay about it. I have not only learned how to include my husband in everything but how important it is to do so. It is so important to have a healthy and happy relationship from the time you start dating to the time you get married and start having children. If more wife's and husband's worked together to strengthen their relationship and to make important decisions together, there would be less divorce. Eternal Marriage is the greatest blessing on earth, do all you can to keep your eternal marriage happy and healthy.