If you're secretly worried about giving up the single life-the digs, the name, the freedom-you're not alone. Here, how to handle the shift from Ms. to Mrs.
By: Marg Stark"This is more than I bargained for."
Isabelle Peterson*, 23, hyperventilated through the first weeks she was betrothed. "His mom didn’t seem to be happy about the engagement because he proposed when she was out of town," Isabelle says. To make matters worse, Isabelle and her fiance are saving money for a house by living, for several years, in the basement of his parents’ house outside Chicago. So even when she’s ballistic, Isabelle has to mind her manners and be a good houseguest. Not to mention that the arrangement has squashed the spontaneity of the young couple’s sex life.
Even though she knows these concessions are temporary, Isabelle sometimes thinks, "This is more than I bargained for and considerably less than I wanted for my fiance and me." Because she's in that unique holding period called engagement, and not yet in the defining first years of marriage, she and her fiance have yet to sculpt a satisfying and autonomous relationship.
"The identity of the marriage is the first ‘child' the couple produces. Just like a real baby, it can bring the couple great joy," write Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee in The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts (Warner). New marriages, like new babies, are overwhelming, stressful and miraculous. How do you stay upbeat amid a flood of sacrifices and struggles?
- Consider your marriage the birth of a new family. Warren Molton, M.S.W., a marriage and family counselor in Kansas City, Missouri, suggests you set boundaries with relatives and others at the outset. Let families know you won't be spending every holiday with them. New marriages need autonomy and time in order to define themselves.
- Make fun of your predicament. A goofy, silent striptease may be just the antidote to a chilly basement with his parents upstairs. Get funny and get innovative, or the stress will eat you alive.
