Hello, dear readers! Let's talk today about the most important thing in our lives that we are not taught at school - about how to create a happy family. This question, I think, worries many. But, unfortunately, not everyone knows what a real family is and what the rules of family happiness are, which is why there are so many divorces, abandoned children and lonely unhappy people around.
If you look closely at the world around you, you will see that we are often surrounded by surrogates: we drink milk that does not contain milk, eat sausage without meat, listen to music in which there is no harmony, watch films and see no meaning in them . How can one understand in such a crazy world where the truth is?
And then we are sincerely surprised that our feelings are the same. We don’t know how to start a family, we don’t understand how to build family relationships so that they bring joy. We believe that love should fall from the sky, that a happy family should build itself, without our participation.
But this is stupid. To achieve something real, you need to work hard on yourself. Often we ourselves, like that fake sausage, seem to be something we are not. And in order to be someone, and not just seem, you need to make every effort.
What prevents you from starting a family?
It is also necessary to deal with the problem of what is stopping you from creating a happy family. This could be several factors:
- Permanent employment. You are either very passionate about something, or you are always at work, or your life consists of family and children. In this case, you just need to unwind, take a walk, do something interesting.
- Parents. If your mother is against a relationship with a certain person, then the question involuntarily appears in your head: “Is it worth starting it?” In any case, you are already an adult, so try to make your own decisions!
Serious dating for starting a family
You are not a married couple yet and you do not have a candidate to become one. Then you need to find a person who could make your family leisure time happy and make life bright and fun! It’s worth taking a closer look: perhaps this person is next to you. First, look for a caring guy or girl around you.
If no one gives you compliments, gifts or other pleasant events, then it’s time to throw people away from your environment. Now do the following:
- Go outside. Take a walk, spend more time outdoors. There is a possibility that your person is close. So go for a walk!
- Dating websites. Visit various dating sites, pages of attractive men on social networks. You shouldn't be too intrusive, but you can write first!
In order to start a relationship, you need to work long and hard, and not just sit in one place. Be sure to try, because every attempt brings you closer to success!
Stage four: 21–28 years
We are looking for something we like, actively gaining life experience, becoming self-sufficient
But these years are specifically for following the dictates of your heart. From 21 to 28 years old we continue to grow and discover new things. At the same time, we simply need to strive to do what we like as often as possible.
We leave our parents' home and gradually develop a healthy sense of independence. Moms and dads should under no circumstances interfere with this separation and try to control us, as they did in childhood. But warm relations between generations certainly do not disappear anywhere, and we are always ready to help each other if the need arises.
Ideally, in the fourth stage of life, our parents and older peers whom we look up to should still provide us with some support so that we can take wise risks and develop fully.
Life in the fourth stage is perceived as a pleasant and exciting journey, since we have not yet found someone with whom we are ready to enter into an official long-term relationship. Even if we have a lover or beloved, we maintain a reasonable distance, allowing each to continue to develop their individuality.
The freedom that is given to us between the ages of 21 and 28 is intended precisely to search, try, explore - and ultimately realize what our soul is about, feel what type of activity we are drawn to. Of course, trial and error has another positive effect: it increases the degree of self-respect.
In the fourth stage of growth, you should avoid fulfilling other people's wishes. Do what brings satisfaction and sincere joy to you, and not to someone else. This way you will learn to accept, understand and appreciate yourself.
What should you do first? The first steps to joint happiness
To begin with, while you are still an ordinary couple, you need not only to create a trusting atmosphere, but also to do the following list of actions:
- Avoid quarrels and conflicts. To create a happy family, you need to try to avoid major quarrels and terrible conflicts. Try to either turn them into a joke or find a solution to the problem together. Listen to your significant other's comments, express your opinion, but not too strongly. Work on yourself and pay attention to yourself first.
- Don't let other people interfere in your personal life. You shouldn’t tell everyone what problems you have or the peculiarities in your family. Try to figure everything out on your own, with your boyfriend. If you have any concerns, don’t be shy—discuss them with your significant other. Your future home is your cozy territory, in which you immediately need to establish understanding and trust.
All this is worth considering while you are an ordinary couple. Do not create any special conflicts and try not to divulge all the secrets of your personal life. You can ask your parents or girlfriend for advice, but do it within reason.
How is a family formed? Or what is life made of?
Now you are more than a couple if you began to trust each other and stopped making all quarrels something important and focusing too much attention on them. It's time to create a social unit, and in the second stage do this:
- One of the conditions for creating a family is the distribution of responsibilities. While you are still a couple, this may not be so important, but when you start your life together, all the changes will be obvious. That is why plan all your actions in advance, try to distribute responsibilities. The creation of an Orthodox family is also based on this.
- One of the important conditions for creating a prosperous family is a common child. Therefore, if you want to have a baby, be sure to think about this important life step and calculate the approximate costs. The sooner you have a child, the sooner you can have a good family. There is no need to delay it, but the birth should also take place in appropriate conditions.
When you take these 2 points into account, it will become much easier to start a kind and loving family.
Stage five: 28–35 years
We find a life partner and learn to give unconditional love
The time comes and we meet our love, realize what his/her strengths are, and understand his/her shortcomings. So it finally becomes clear to us what true love is. The tendency to make demands and focus on multiple expectations is a thing of the past. And even when you encounter misunderstanding, this is not a signal to immediately break off the relationship and stop giving unconditional love.
It would seem that all these simple truths should have been understood in youth. However, only an adult and independent person, like you become in the period from 28 to 35 years, can fully experience them and see how they manifest themselves in everyday life.
Between the ages of 28 and 35, we are approaching the realization of such an important feeling as self-sufficiency. We trust ourselves more and more so that in relationships with our life partner we do not fall victim to our own high expectations. This is the basis of true, unconditional, undemanding, absolutely selfless love.
The main spiritual need that we should strive to satisfy during the fifth period of development is to give love to our family and friends free of charge. And especially to your significant other. The stronger our union becomes, the freer and calmer we act not only in our personal lives, but also in all other aspects. When relationships with your loved one move to the level of complete mutual understanding and devotion to each other, you become wiser and build communication with all other people much more correctly than before.
Through tolerance and sensitivity, you accept your significant other for who they are. Together you manage to follow an unusual path that none of you could follow alone. You develop the ability to listen, share a wide variety of impressions, and with the help of these skills, each of you achieves more and more significant goals in all areas of life.
How to create a friendly family? Basic rules in a family with a child
In the modern world of the development of computer technology and new areas in the information structure, every person becomes more or less dependent on gadgets. That is why ordinary friendly communication fades into the background. In order to return it, you must:
- One of the most important aspects of starting a family is understanding your child's little joys. Try to remember when your baby was happiest and repeat that moment! Find enough time to devote to your child. It is during the time that you spend with your child that you will be able to learn about his desires and experiences.
- New acquaintances. To start a family, you must immediately accustom your children to a daily routine. Show your baby a child his age who is making the bed and doing his homework. It can be used as an example, but you shouldn’t overdo it. Otherwise, children may think that you don't love them and become very upset.
- If you have a free minute, talk to your baby. During a walk, breakfast or other free moment, ask how he is doing, what he did in kindergarten or school. Keep the dialogue going if necessary.
The most important thing is to talk to people, and your child is no exception, rather, on the contrary, a shining example.
Functions of family relationships
Function is a psycho-emotional action necessary for the normal functioning of the family. Types of family functions include:
- Emotional. Fills the natural need for acceptance, approval, affection, respect, emotional support, security. Spouses create a psychological climate by showing positive emotions towards each other.
- Educational. Satisfies the parental needs of spouses, allowing them to realize their desire to give birth and raise children, and to realize themselves through procreation. Prepares children for subsequent socialization and self-realization in society. Parents perceive their children as extensions of themselves.
- Spiritual communication. Expressed in spiritual enrichment, expressed through joint leisure activities.
- Sexually erotic. Satisfies the physiological needs of spouses, regulates intimate relationships between husband and wife, and in the long term leads to a feeling of satisfaction due to the appearance of children in the marriage.
- Household. Fills a person’s need to have a minimum level of everyday comfort, food, and other material goods. Mental and physical health largely depends on the implementation of this function.
- Primary social control. Regulates behavior within the framework of accepted social norms, acting as a way to prevent deviant forms of interaction. It is especially important to maintain social control over individuals who, due to age, clinical or other reasons, are not able to independently regulate behavior.
By implementing family functions, spouses satisfy their needs and help their partners satisfy them. An ideal marriage allows husband and wife to develop in parallel, as a couple and as individuals.
Why do relationships fade? Warm feelings in the family
Sooner or later you begin to realize that a crisis is coming in your feelings. The former passion has already passed, all days become ordinary and nondescript. What to do? Looking for the answer:
- Creating a family. Men in some married couples very often forget that time flies very quickly and it’s time to start building a family. That is why, if you are still a loving couple, but the relationship is beginning to fade, then think about building a family home.
- Humble yourself. If you're already a family, then just accept the idea that relationships won't always be great. Remember why you fell in love with your husband or wife? Scroll through warm and pleasant moments in your head, it will become easier.
- Compliments. Do you think your man has stopped complimenting you? Then shower him with flattering words! Remind how smart, strong and good your guy is! Give compliments first to get them back!
- Solve all problems calmly. Having a family quarrel? Any other unpleasant situation that caused you and your wife to have a big fight? Try to resolve the conflict differently next time, using tenderness and understanding! After all, understanding is the basis of future family victories and one of the most important aspects of creating a family!
- Don't be a selfish person. Don’t think only about yourself, anticipate situations in advance and take care of your wife and children. In ideal married couples, spouses depend on each other, but equally.
How to create a good family: wait or act?
Family happiness is not given out in the wedding palace or after the Sacrament of Marriage has been performed in the Church. How to create a family in which two will not only unite into one flesh, but will also live soul to soul?
The host of the “Word” program on the Soyuz TV channel talks with Archpriest Vladimir Khulap, Doctor of Theology, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy.
– Father Vladimir, how to create a good family?
– If we are talking about creating a Christian family, then we are talking about a certain community of faith and a common understanding of what marriage is, since for believers this is a very important step.
This is a step not just in the face of the state, in the face of a woman in the registry office, who on behalf of the state proclaims them husband and wife, but also an important step in the face of God.
If we look at the Holy Scriptures, we see that the image of marriage runs throughout the Old and New Testaments. The very first chapters of the Book of Genesis say that it was God who created man and woman and brought Eve to Adam. And the last book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse, ends with a description of the wedding feast of Christ and the Church.
Marriage is something so high, so pure and important that it is attached to the relationship between God and the Church, between God and the believer. This is a pure and high relationship of love. Therefore, creating a family is the path to this love.
And indeed, very often our relationships at this preliminary stage are and remain only love, when we see some kind of ideal of a person who does not have any negative traits. We consciously or unconsciously create this ideal and cherish it in every possible way.
And therefore, of course, before starting a marriage, it is important to understand what kind of person he really is, and not in terms of some kind of critical approach - looking for negative traits, but to understand whether I can trust this person, the most important thing is that I am: my life and my love.
Marriage is something that, at least ideally, is for Christians for life, so I must give myself to the closest and most beloved person.
Am I ready for this sacrifice of giving myself, and am I ready to take on this other person - with all his shortcomings, with all his problems, but, at the same time, with all the beautiful things that are in him?
Genesis 24 tells the story of the marriage of Isaac, son of Abraham, and Rebekah, and we see two important things in this story.
On the one hand, it is a prayer that this marriage will actually happen; this is a prayer to find the right bride, to find the one who, as this text says, “was chosen for him by God,” that is, destined for him.
But at the same time, this is not some kind of passive waiting, when a young man or his father just sits and waits for some special miracle to be answered to this prayer. We see that they send a servant to another land in order to find a bride for Isaac.
And in this story, no matter how different it may be from our modern realities, we see two important points. On the one hand, marriages for Christians are created by God, so it is impossible to do without praying to God that the Lord would arrange this marriage already on the way of preparing for this marriage. And on the other hand, one's own human efforts are in no way denied.
And indeed, if we believe that nothing happens by chance in life, then in this prayer it is worth looking around us.
It is worth looking at those who are next to us as those people whom God sends to us, so that something changes in our lives, so that we receive some lessons that will allow us to achieve greater spiritual growth.
And in such a mood, we can say that there will definitely be some person nearby - sooner or later - who will become that messenger, that answer to our prayers that we turn to God.
And, of course, it is very important that this period of joint recognition also includes certain periods of problems, some, including critical situations, when a young man and a girl not only walk hand in hand, in some kind of euphoria, but also when they can jointly understand how they will respond to these crises, since it is in a crisis situation that a person becomes who he really is.
Then all the masks are torn off, then some external artificial coating goes away, and the person becomes himself. After all, the whole family life will consist not only of joy, but of problems.
And if a young man and a girl are ready to solve these problems together, then this is already a certain basis for jointly creating a strong family, since a family is destroyed, first of all, by problems that especially young spouses do not know how to solve.
Contact on an everyday, everyday level leads to the fact that it turns out that it was not love, but infatuation. It was a feeling that, like the wind, came and went.
In fact, love is not the beginning, or even so much the beginning, as the goal of marriage. Marriage begins with falling in love.
Love is something that, as a result of daily being together, daily exploits, including family ones, daily giving up big and small for the sake of a loved one, comes in five, ten, fifteen years.
But this love is not created by simply flipping a switch. It cannot simply be accomplished or created after a certain time; it is a natural process.
Just as good wine requires a certain period of aging, so true love, real family happiness requires a certain and often very, very long period of time.
And if young people are ready for this joint labor of love, then this can and should be thought about during the period of preparation for marriage.
– What should you do if a young man and a girl want to get married, but their relatives are against their union? What is the role of parental blessing in creating a marriage?
– Indeed, if we look at the pre-revolutionary history of Russia, Rus', we will see that parental blessing was very, very important.
Parents blessed their children for marriage with special icons, and these icons, like wedding icons, family icons passed from the parents' house to the young people's house.
They became, as it were, their altar, a home spiritual center, in front of which they performed their prayers.
But at the same time, we see that the social situation, and the general view of the relationship between a man and a woman, and the view of marriage - all these views have changed very much recently.
Now, first of all, the personal aspect of the relationship between a young man and a girl is emphasized. That is, not as it was in ancient times - it is not families who marry, but young people.
Therefore, it is their responsibility and their decision. No one can forbid them to do this, and no one, on the contrary, can insist that the marriage be concluded in this particular way.
Therefore, probably, in order for the situation to be more peaceful, you should just talk calmly with your parents first and understand what the problem is, what the prejudices may be, or what their reluctance to enter into this marriage is; since, indeed, there are a number of prejudices in our society against marriage, for example, with a person of a different nationality or with a person who does not belong to the same social status as the son or daughter of these parents, and so on.
It seems to me that parents often try to realize something in their child’s marriage that they themselves did not succeed in. Often, a mother simply does not want to let her daughter go and give her to someone else’s young man, since she is left alone. This selfish, to some extent, approach does not allow the daughter to realize herself and does not allow her to achieve the fullness of her own female happiness.
Therefore, of course, there must be family peace, since along with marriage we enter into certain relationships with the relatives of our chosen one, our soul mate. Peaceful dialogue is the basis for a peaceful marriage.
And at the same time, of course, gently, but nevertheless confidently, one can and should say that it is my choice, I should go through life with this person. And parents must give their child the right to make mistakes, since he is an adult.
For example, in the parable of the prodigal son, we see that the father allows his son to leave home so that the child makes mistakes and returns home with new life experiences - which was perhaps not pedagogical, and from our point of view not entirely correct.
Therefore, if God does not take away a person’s freedom of choice, then even more so the freedom of choice in terms of marriage cannot be taken away from a child by his parents.
– According to the Orthodox view of marriage, a family is always children. What to do if young people are not ready to have a child - for example, due to some financial or housing circumstances?
– Indeed, in the system of priorities of modern society or family, children often find themselves in some kind of last or penultimate place after housing, cars, recreation, comfortable conditions, free time, and so on.
Of course, children are the purpose of marriage. But this is not the most important goal, since people marry in order to achieve unity - at the physical level, at the mental level, at the spiritual level, to achieve this new fullness of being.
But love directed towards each other should not be limited to these two loving hearts. If this is truly complete love, joyful love, sacrificial love, then it pours out, and the fruit of this love is a child.
And therefore, if we look at the rites of an Orthodox wedding, marriage, then we will see a constant request for children precisely as something that is a gift from God, a special gift that serves the continuation of the human race, and at the same time a gift that gives special happiness this family.
After all, it often turns out that a woman has spent her entire life pursuing a career, making money, buying an apartment or some new gadgets, and so on. But we are not getting younger, we are getting old, this is a natural process. There comes an age when it seems that everything is already there, you can give birth to a child, but the body is no longer capable of this.
And a woman in her twilight years turns out to be a successful entrepreneur, realized in a variety of areas, but not realized in this regard - precisely in the area in which by nature the Lord gave her the miracle and joy of being a mother.
Speaking about these fears from the point of view of Christianity, we must remember and believe that if the Lord gives a child, then He will certainly give everything that is necessary for the upbringing and development of this child. And it depends only on the parents - not on the size of their income, but on the size and quality of their loving heart - what his life will be like. And the ideal of this life is love, joy and happiness.
Sob. inf. Photos from open sources
Important advice!
Another aspect that is worth highlighting as a separate item is the ability to forgive. Every person makes mistakes. After all, if you do something for the first time, then shortcomings are possible.
If a person has made a mistake and sincerely repents of it, then forget and forgive. No one is immune from unpleasant incidents. Also, you should not remind your partner about the problem and make it a “life lesson.” Family happiness consists of care and warmth. You build it yourself, invest tenderness. Creating a family for a woman is the most important thing in her life.
