People get married for the wrong reason - I believe that there is only one real reason to get married. And that's to live the REST OF YOUR LIFE for the person that you LOVE, giving them everything, always being there, and letting nothing get in the way. And though there's only one right reason to get married, there are many bad reasons to get married. Some bad reasons to get married are a way to get away from your parents, a response to an unplanned pregnancy, a temporary agrement until something better comes along, or you're living together and you might as well get a tax break. These are some of the main bad reasons to get married. The problem with getting married for the wrong reason, is that you're building your marriage on a bad foundation. And when you get married for the wrong reason, your idea and definition of marriage is flawed, and that's going to cause some problems. Now a couple that gets married for one of these reasons can still fix things and make things work, but the majority of the time, this doesn't happen. When your marriage hits a little trouble, you don't have a good reason why you got married, and nothing to fall back on to build things back up.

People thought marriage was going to be perfect or would solve problems - I think that there are a lot of people, probably mostly girls, that have this perception of marriage being perfect. They think that once they get married, things will be good because you will be with the person you love, and things will be smoothly, because you love each other, and that's all that matters. Each marriage, and relationship for that matter, all go through a stage in the beginning where everything seems perfect. With marriage, I call it the "honeymoon" stage. It includes the honeymoon, and a short time after the honeymoon where things seem to go smoothly and everything is going right. But then something happens; The newness wears off, and things aren't as glamorous as we thought it would be. You begin to say to yourself, "This isn't what I signed up for." You go into the marriage not intending it to end, but at the first sign of trouble, you throw in the towel.

Selfishness - Society teaches it's all about me. Everywhere you look, you learn that it's all about YOU. It's all about how YOU feel. It's all about what YOU want. It's all about where YOU want to go. When you turn on the tv, all you see is advertisements that sell you stuff that make you look good, that make you look good. In the work place, you learn that it's all about how far you can go, how much you can earn. It's all about how far you can go, no matter what it takes. The problem with this is that marriage isn't about YOU, it's ALL about the other person. This is why marriages aren't working. If you are willing to put yourself first in ANYTHING over your spouse, then your marriage isn't going to work. Because in life, you're going to be tempted and tested from every possible angle. And if you have a "me first" mentality when it comes to even the smallest aspect in life, it will come out, and it will cause problems.

Not sure how a real marriage is supposed to be - We are encountering this more and more as the divorce rate continues to climb. Parents pass on a lot more then their DNA to their kids. What your parents think, say, and do impact your thoughts, words, and actions. Typically we become who our parents are, either for the good or bad. They are who we look up to and idolize as we grow up. We see the way our parents treat each other, and think that is the norm. The problem is, is that a lot of people grow up in broken homes, where there is only one parent, or the parents are bad role models. If you have divorced parents, or a dad that abused your mom, or mom was an alcoholic, that affects your view on life, and on marriage. The good news is that you don't have to be like your parents if you don't want. You can learn from their mistakes, and know not what to do. You might have to work at it more, but you're the only one responsible for your decisions and actions.

Other problems - There are plenty of things that can come between us in marriage; money, parents or family members, jobs or careers, or a number of things. Sometimes we have parents or family members that try to run our lives or get into our business. We need to be willing to tell them to butt out, that you're old enough to make your own decisions. You need to realize that you aren't 8, and that it's not your job to make them happy. Sometimes a family member can come between you and your spouse. Money is another huge thing that can break up a marriage really easy. There are many things that can cause a small division in between us. And that small division grows usually through resentment. Resentment closes down communication with each other, closes down spending time with each other, and closes down being intimate with each other. Resentment comes from a single event, or a string of events, and is a downward destructive spiral.