Save the Date!: Select a Mate - Part Four

"Time" can be your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on how you use it. Our ancestors demonstrated great wisdom in creating the tradition of an engagement period prior to marriage. It seemed wise, also, to set a wedding date several months, or a year, in advance. If this time is used wisely (more on that later), this time period can be critical to the effective "selecting a mate" process. As indicated earlier, if this time is focused solely upon planning the details of a wedding ceremony, this time period can actually contribute to the false security that sufficient due diligence has been directed toward the selection process, when in actuality, the primary focus has been devoted to one day of life (i.e., the wedding day).

You now know the critical importance of discovering your true values and priorities in life. Similarly, you have considered those of your potential mate, and you have discussed those between yourselves. NOW, it is important to use the period of engagement to further examine yourself and your mate. If you are not utilizing the services of a professional psychologist or counselor, it will be useful to record your discoveries, made during this period, in a diary or journal. It will be helpful to review these discoveries later and to view the process. Hopefully, as you later review the record of your insights and experiences, you will not detect a process of "justification" whereby you gain an important insight about yourself or your potential mate and then justify it or rationalize it away by saying, "it's not that important", "it will change", or "it's too late now".

Over the many years as a psychotherapist individuals would approach me for assistance in overcoming a troublesome issue and/or they requested assistance with personal growth and development. Often, they would ask, "Where shall we start?" My comments were typically as follows, "Tell me about your most intimate relationship. It can be with a sibling, a parent, a lover, or a spouse, but I have found that individuals demonstrate their greatest strengths and their greatest weaknesses within the context of their most intimate relationships". I have found that this phenomenon of self-discovery within the relationship context is limited, if the degree of intimacy is not well developed and often there is little or no self-discovery in relationships where there is little or essentially no intimacy. Not surprisingly, numerous individuals had limited knowledge or experience of intimacy. Often also, they could not name a role model for intimacy from individuals that they knew personally. However, if there was evidence of some degree of intimacy in their own personal histories, then the examples of "greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses" were readily available for examination and insightful learning.

The parallel here, of course, is that the engagement period is an opportunity for the individuals to examine themselves within the context of an intimate relationship, in the present, and as it develops over the coming months. As mentioned earlier in this series, some individuals are surprised and distressed at how much different they see themselves and their new mates in their new roles as spouses. They often are shocked, not only by how they perceive their spouses to have changed without warning, but they are particularly confused at how they perceive their own changes within the marital context. Some of these changes are viewed as positives, but often the individual perceives that he/she as lost his/her individual identity. This sense of loss can be profound and the individual is often reluctant to confess the discovery of this insight. He/she is often even more reluctant to express the sense of individual loss that they experience, owing to the political sensitivity and the fear of conflict that such expression might elicit. This experience might be the beginning of the accumulation of "separate secrets" for the individuals. This accumulation process, over time, serves to create emotional distance between the individuals and this process impedes the development of intimacy (and honesty) within the marital relationship.

Thus, the period of pre-marital engagement is a time whereby the individuals can not only examine their perception of compatibility with each other, but the individuals can examine their own individual readiness for the commitment that they are about to pledge. If this time is used in this manner, then time has been your best friend and you have made great strides to Save The Date!

D. Jerome Meers, Ph.D.
Consulting Psychologist