Marriage Experts Assignment 7

My marriage experts where my parents Tomas and JoAnna Iriarte. The both of them have been married since May 9 of 1965. They got married when they were 17 years old and my mother was pregnant with my brother. So they come form an old fashioned back round where if the girl gets pregnant you have to get married. My parents started dating when they where in junior high. I know this assignment is entitled Marriage Experts but my parents  do not feel like they are experts by any means. My mother's challenge was having to be such a young wife and a soon to be new mom. Although she wanted to marry my dad because she felt like she had loved him forever she was facing the unknown. This was really scary for her. My dad said the same thing as my mom, he wanted to marry my mom because he loved her deeply but was scared if he would be a good husband and father.  When my father was 18 he enlisted in the US Army and was then shiped off to Korea to fight in the Vietnam War. He said he did it because he was having trouble financially supporting his family with only odd jobs and no health benefits. The military offered him a steady reliable income along with health benefits for his wife and son. Dad also said he like the idea that he would be able to travel because he grew up on a tiny island in the pacific called Guam and never left the island since his birth in 1948. My parents had never been apart up until my father's enlistment into the Army. My mother wrote letters to my father while he was away everyday and took pictures of my brother so my dad could see him because my brother was just and infant when he left. My father said he wrote when he got a chance and this is how they stayed connected to one another. The other challenges they faced where financial issues because my mother could not work because she had epilepsy and although it was controlled by medication most employers did not want to higher her. She just became a stay at home mom and my father along with being in the military would work a second job. My mother said never go to bed mad when you or your spouse have an argument. When you fight in your marriage its healthy. She feels its healthy because each person is communicating what is upsetting them and this is good, rather than pretending everything is fine and not saying anything. This is bad for a marriage she said. My father said he would rather not fight with my mom so he would always tell her in a disagreement they were having that she was right. He realized this was bad because he was not expressing his true feelings and that she needed to know what was bothering him with her so she could try and fix it. My parents have learned that communication is the most important thing to a sucessful marriage, along with mutual attraction, and common interests. You also must work at being one person, not each partner making their own decisions because this just will not work, you will be fighting all the time, and in a bad way that you will grow apart and want to end the marriage by getting a divorce. In their opinion divorce should not even be an option if you truly love your partner and you both want to make your marriage work and stay together.