5 Tiny Signs You Should Call Off Your Wedding
Are you really ready to walk down the aisle?
Ave Calvar | Unsplash You would be surprised how many women going through divorces tell me they knew they were making a mistake when they walked down the aisle — in more recent headlines, Kim Kardashian even shared this similar sentiment. Below are five warning signs you may want to consider before saying "I do."
Here are 5 tiny signs you should call off your wedding:
1. You don't get along with his family
Many couples go through with weddings hoping all the family stuff will "just work out." Don't fall into this trap because it seldom does. Issues with in-laws tend to get worse over time — especially when babies come along. If his family is causing a problem in your relationship before you're married, you may want to give serious thought to calling off your wedding.
2. You've dated for less than a year
Most people are on their best behavior for the first twelve months of a relationship. After that, people tend to let their guard down a little bit and you get to see what a person is really like. This is important because ideally when you get married, you will be spending the rest of your lives together — you will need to know if your partner is someone you can live with on a day-to-day, long-term basis after the honeymoon phase of your relationship is over.
3. You haven't agreed about kids, careers, and other fundamental issues
So many couples get caught up in wedding planning, that they forget to talk about the fundamental issues of sharing a life. Will you have kids? How many? What religion will you raise your children? Where will you live? Will one of you be a stay-at-home parent? How will holidays be handled? How will housework be divided?
Couples should spend at least as much time paying attention to the details of their lives together as they do to the details of their weddings. If you can't agree on these types of fundamental issues before your marriage, you should consider calling off your wedding until you reach a mutually acceptable agreement on the details of your lives together.
4. You lack conflict resolution skills
A lot of couples write off arguments before a wedding as "wedding day jitters," but the truth of the matter is that if you have horrendous arguments and fights with your partner and nothing ever seems to get resolved, you may want to consider calling off your wedding until the two of you work on your conflict resolution skills. Long-term relationships require good conflict resolution skills and the good news is that they can be learned if both couples are committed to doing so.
5. Your gut feeling is telling you to call it off
We have gut feelings for a reason and where most of us get into trouble is when we don't listen to them. If your gut feeling is telling you to call off your wedding, it's probably a good idea to listen to that feeling and at the very least postpone your wedding until the feeling goes away. If you are meant to be together, that current gut feeling that is telling you "don't do it," will eventually pass.
Christina Steinorth-Powell, LMFT is a psychotherapist, relationship expert, and the author of three books. Her advice has been featured on Fox News, NBC, CBS, and in publications such as Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Woman's Day, Glamour, and The Chicago Tribune, among many others.