Good Career, Happy Home

You can reach various definitions about the family, the social institution which is subject to destruction in the period we live in. When you talk about family in modern times, the nuclear family comes to mind. Nuclear family is the smallest part of the society in which parents and unmarried children share the same house. The family, which is the smallest part of the society, should be shaped properly while being establishing. Making a good start is something to do with a good preparation period. 

When the family is established, the preparation phase must be supported with training seminars and personalized consultations. Just as when driving a car, giving responsibility to someone, or assigning a manager to a place, one's competences and capabilities are checked, likewise while the family is being established, soon to wed couples should be given formal education either through courses or special follow-up of the family elders, and they should be prepared for all situations that may be encountered in the marital life.

Generally, studies and conversations on family and marriage are made about rehabilitation after the family is broken up. While working on family, it is best to set up in such a way as to prevent problems before they arise. A well-built structure, if the ground is surveyed and appropriate material is used, endures perhaps a hundred years or more. Before the causes of short marriages are revealed, the secrets of long and healthy marriages must be solved and modeled in a sense.

In order to have long marriages and to have a healthy family life, first of all, attention should be paid to the marriage setup stage, spouses should be given the opportunity to get to know each other and spouses should strive to know each other. Young people who have received marriage preparation, formally or informally, before marriage, understand the importance of getting to know each other and will make an endeavor to manage this process well. As Yunus Emre said, "Let's meet, make it easy, let's love, let's be loved, this world is left to no one."

The dating process should be started by the spouses’ recognizing each other's personality and characteristics. This process should be expanded in the context of the tastes, likes and dislikes of spouses, and should minimize misunderstandings that may occur later by expressing the truth without hiding. In order to predict the probable problems, personality tests should be used in the process of knowing each other. Nobody should be forced to change, nor should be forced to act differently. He should accept his wife, even anyone, as they are and try to create a system based on the basis of building good relationships.

The formation of a new system for two different individuals, culture and family structure, means forming a family. The new system must continue to relate to old families. In the name of positive support of the process, families shouldn’t constantly be involved in the newly established family, rather; they should be involved whenever they are asked to, and they should accept this process willingly. Families should support the formation of a newly formed family psychologically and morally just as they do it materially and spiritually.

As can be seen above, the family needs to be well constructed in order to maintain a long-term healthy life. It is very important to have a strategy for relationship management, financial management, space management and crisis management. In other words, the family should take the scenario/map against the new situations it will encounter. However, it should be known that "the map is not the same as the surface" and families should pre-agree on a family counselor they know will be with them. This counselor should be ready, whether this is voluntary or a corporate family counselor. This counselor should be someone (family coach-family counselor or a family elder) who can not only be consulted in times of crisis but also it should be someone who can be consulted on how to deal with new situations encountered.

These were the things to be said about preventive efforts; however, it should not be forgotten that eliminating problems that may arise in the family will not be as easy as discussed. Domestic violence, for example, will lead to a loss of trust between spouses, perhaps leading to a decrease in love. That’s why, turning to violence in a family is, in a sense, like "breaking the pot." It is best not to break it at all, rather than wait for it to be the way it used to be. Not only physical violence, but also psychological violence such as humiliation, shouting, depriving financially, exclusion, and not resorting to their opinions may have similar consequences.

The marriage institution has both materialistic and spiritual aspects/goals. Families should be positioned by knowing the physiological, psychological, social and cultural aspects of it. In this sense, the expectations from the family should be considered together with the materialistic and spiritual content. If communication within the family is well-established and maintained, it has transformed into a garden of paradise." But, if it is neglected and if it has transformed into a conflicting environment, then it has become "a pit of hell."

Spouses should see marriage as a sacrifice, but while making sacrifice, everyone should take on responsibility, so that joint planning must be made, and it must be shaped by meetings held in the family, even when making materialistic and spiritual sacrifices. Parents should be careful about not acting without taking their spouse's opinions. All steps based on decisions taken in family meetings will contribute to marriage. Even if spouses think they are making sacrifices by constantly bottling up and continuing their marriage, they will cause "dead marriages". Sacrifice will turn into sufferance. The fact that the spouses take all the decisions they will take in the family council and stand behind their decisions will not only increase the ability to act together but also they will realize to be us instead of me.

Children born into a well-established family life will appear as a good model for their children as parents-to-be who live their stories or tell their stories as they grow older. Spouses should first display a behavior themselves before school age in the name of their children's education in order to gain behavior. Children are the fruits of a family if there are no biological barriers. Studies show that divorce rates are lower in families with children. 

As a result, if the family structure is well planned during the establishment phase and an effort is made, it is not immediately considered to be demolished, it is not immediately considered to be given up, nor is it shaken by a small problem. Families may experience some problems during their marriage, remember that it is impossible not to have these problems. But if they have crisis plans ahead, they will come out of the crisis by getting stronger. If there's no plan, you can guess the outcome. I highly recommend newly established marriages and families not to neglect daily, weekly, monthly and yearly maintenances and also remind them that sometimes a little kindness and a lovely statement may change everything, thus they should act accordingly. It's worth all the efforts for a happy, peaceful home.

*Abdulrezzak Çil, Phd / Family Counselor