Making Friends Together | Pre-Marriage | Dave and Ashley Willis

Hey, we are Dave and Ashley Willis from the brand new video course called Preparing for I Do, designed to help you build a solid foundation for your future marriage. You can find that resource@premarriage.com but today in this video, we want to talk about a really important element for your relationship. Whether you're engaged, whether you're dating, or whether you're married. In all seasons of your relationship, one key important thing that you got to keep in mind is your relationship will be stronger if you're surrounded by the right friends. And this is something we don't talk about often, but this is something that is so huge, the right couple friends make a difference because your relationship will start looking like the relationships of those people who you're around the most, the good and the bad. So you want to pick couple friends who have the kind of habits that you want to emulate in your relationship. So how do you find friends like that?

Well, I mean, I think very practically speaking is if you have other couples in your life who are maybe already engaged or are going to be engaged and you're in a similar phase of life, and so I would encourage you to get together with them, talk about all your wedding plans together, talk about some of your questions that you have about getting married, and start to cultivate friendships that way. And this is something we did. We actually joined a pre marriage class at our church and got to meet some other couple friends there. And some of our first friends, their names were Becky and Jason and we did everything with them like it was so fun. We all got married around the same time and then we had other couples kind of join that group and we would, we would celebrate holidays together and it was such a fun time. And it really just makes marriage, it makes it more fun because you can talk about those things that are going on not only with your wedding plans, but also if you are dealing with problems with in laws and just kind of learning from each other, I think it's an important thing to do kind of right out of the gate if you can.

It is a great habit to start early, and it is one. We started early and I'm so thankful we did. And in different seasons, that group of friends might look different. You know, you might be really close to certain couples during one season and then, you know, life takes you in different directions and that's okay. But in every season of your relationship, it's important to have some people in your life that you're going deep with. You know, it's great to have 2000 friends on Facebook and Instagram where you can like their posts when they scroll through. But it's also important to have a small core of friends at every season of life who really know what's going on with you. People who can offer encouragement and accountability and prayer and support when you need it, People you can laugh with, people you can cry with. And like Ashley said, where you can learn from each other because you're in a similar season. But in addition to being close friends with people in the same season as you, it's also, I think, important to look for at least one couple who is, you know, a little older than you and further along and maybe look for one couple who's maybe younger than you and just starting out that you can. You can kind of mentor and pour into someone farther along that you can learn from. Because if everybody in your life is in the exact same season of you, then it can kind of create this, like, little bubble where, you know, you're not being stretched. So you need those friends who are in the exact same season, but also be intentional about looking for those in other seasons of life. And church is a great place to find that. You know, the church is God's design for creating multi generational community. And that's certainly where most of our great friends have emerged over the years.

Absolutely. And we have gone to mentor couples like we have. One in particular we've gone to over the years many times because we've been dealing with maybe little sticking points in our marriage. And one was how to discipline our kids, you know, to get on the same page when it comes to disciplining our kids. And we sat down with this couple, and they helped us tremendously. And we've still gone back to them over the years, and so it's such a great relationship to have. And I also want to say something about your friends that maybe you have individually that you still want to cultivate. You know, once you get married. You don't want to, you know, walk out on your friends once you get married. But I want to say this. Don't only lean on those friends. Make sure that the two of you are cultivating friendships with couples together. Because what we often see is when you aren't intentional about doing this, you tend to find a husband and a wife who have friends, but they're just their individual friends, and they just go off and do their things by themselves, and they miss out on the richness of getting together with a couple that they both actually enjoy. And, you know, we'll have couples say, but you Know, my husband, like, he doesn't really like my friend's husband. Like, we just don't kind of get along. And I would say, well, maybe that's not the couple that you're gonna hang with all the time. Maybe there's a couple that you haven't even met yet, but you gotta put yourself out there. You gotta join a small group at church. Maybe it's, you know, a couple that you run into with something that you both enjoy. Like, maybe you're taking ballroom dancing lessons because you're preparing for your wedding. You can meet a lot of great couples there. So just don't. Don't count yourself out. Like, you have to make sure that you're intentional about it. And I promise you, you will find these couples that. That really are gonna be great friends.

Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that specific point up, because it's great that you have your friends, your boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance has their friends, and that's great.

Absolutely. Yes.

As much as possible, you don't want to divide up your future marriage into his and hers, but you want to make it ours as much as possible. Because couples that tend to go in opposite directions, they look at everything as his and hers. His money, her money, his friends, her friends, his career, her career, his dreams, her dreams, his hobbies, her hobbies, his. And they essentially just start living as roommates with very little shared in common. But the couples that thrive for a lifetime, they try to make everything ours. It's our dreams, it's our money, it's our time. And as much as possible, it's our friends that we're doing life and we're doing community with. And that doesn't mean you lose all semblance of your individuality. No, marriage doesn't change who you are, but it should bring out the best version of who you are. And that best version should come in a solid partnership. So make sure as much as possible, through your friendships, through every part of your life, you're building a life together as you're preparing for I Do, where it's about us together. And you can learn a lot more about this friend aspect and a lot more about every aspect of building a solid relationship for your future marriage. By checking out the video course Preparing for I Do, you can find that@premarriage.com.