Marriage is a life time commitment and being ready for it takes a lot of reasoning and emotional work. Being ready for marriage is different than being ready for a relationship, since marriage is something that many hope to last forever.
If you are considering settling down with your partner, you need time? to think deep to know whether you are truly ready to bear all the responsibilities that come with marriage. You may ask 'how do I know if I’m ready or not?' Well, you may ask yourself the following questions.
Do you feel you miss your best friend when your partner is not around? Do you feel no other relationship could make you happier than the one you are in right now? Is the topic of trust mutually absolute to both of you? Do you accept that your marriage will not merge two separate lifestyles, but will strengthen the lifestyle you have established?
If you have positive answers to these questions, then it means you are ready to settle down, but you still have to weigh the following to know if your partner is ready because you are both running the race together.
The “we” fact
Once you get married it is no longer about you but about both parties in the relationship. You will need to forget about your weekly trips to your friend's house without asking your spouse if he has anything planned.
This doesn't mean that you won't have your space or that you can't have time for yourself, but it simply means that you should consider everything about your loved one before making the decision by yourself. If you or your partner can't think of everything as “we” then you might as well forget about getting married.
Compromising your wants
Both you and your partner need to be able to say no or compromise what you have or want. There are going to be certain things in your relationship that one of you may not want to do or that one of you wants but the other doesn't.
There has to be a solid ground to compromise on and without it you can forget having a long lasting marriage.
Know the secrets to happy marriage
Everyone should know what the secret is to a happy marriage. The secret to a happy marriage is to the best spouse? you can. If you don't feel that either one of you are up for this challenge, then getting married is not to be considered.
If you cannot offer your best of everything to your spouse, you might as well forget about it unless you want to end up in a divorce a short while after your wedding. Every person needs to think about how they are treated now and how they expect that they will be treated when they are married.
Can both of you handle stress?
Marriage can put a lot of stress on a person even when they don't realize it. How do you handle stress? If stress is hard for either one of you to deal with now, how do you think it will be when you have bills piling up or when something does not go as planned
Commitment
There should be some type of commitment there and this even has to do with children. I know that many people feel that they have already committed themselves to one another but if you argue now, how do you suppose that it will be once you get married?
Do you fight all the time?
If you and your spouse are such that argue or fight all the time, then you are not ready for marriage. This should be one of the first signs that tell if you are ready to get married or not.
Make a list and check it twice
Every couple should make a list together of some of the good things about their relationship and some of the bad . Making a list will allow you both to see what benefits your relationship has and what are some of the things that you need to work on.
Work on the bad things before you decide to get married so that you will know if you will be able to work through them or if it is something that you will always have a problem with.
Take time to re-evaluate your relationship and don't feel discouraged by this list. This is only a list but it is one that many people have seen and been through to see if their relationship is ready to take the next step forward.