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Being committed to a wedding and marriage entails understanding that it is not going to be a smooth ride,commitment means facing all the challenges that may come your way together and compromising when necessary.

Commitment is not a very “sexy” word or concept but it probably has more to do with making marriages work than anything except common values. It’s not just about reciting marriage vows or having a piece of paper that says “marriage license.” Commitment is important because we act differently when we know that our futures are tied together. You may avoid a prickly conversation if you know the other person will not be around forever. You may move on to another love if your current one has a debilitating accident or simply starts to rub you the wrong way. Commitment means you’ve promised to stay and work it through, not just today but forever.

Sourced from: http://www.foryourmarriage.org/dating-engaged/must-have-conversations/commitment/

So what does it mean to be committed to your marriage?

Each of the partners should work hard to ensure a long and  successful relationship.In a good relationship each partner helps improve the other partner’s weaknesses.This helps each one of them to grow and become successful.

“It means do what it takes to make the relationship successful. That’s what this research is saying. That’s what commitment really means,” Karney said. “In a long-term relationship, both parties cannot always get their way.”

When a couple has a dispute, they have many choices of how to respond, the psychologists said.

“One choice,” Karney said, “is if you dig your heels in, then I can dig my heels in too. I can say, ‘You’re wrong. Listen to me!’ But if this relationship is really important to me, I’m willing to say, ‘I will compromise.’ What is my goal? Is it to win this battle? Is it to preserve the relationship? The behaviors I might engage in to win this conflict are different from those that are best for the relationship. The people who think more about protecting the relationship over the long term are more likely to think this is not that big a problem.”

“When the stakes are high, our relationships are vulnerable,” Bradbury said. “When we’re under a great deal of stress or when there is a high-stakes decision on which you disagree, those are defining moments in a relationship. What our data indicate is that committing to the relationship rather than committing to your own agenda and your own immediate needs is a far better strategy. We’re not saying it’s easy.”

How do you do this when it’s difficult?

“Find ways to compromise, or at least have the conversation that allows you and your partner to see things eye to eye,” Bradbury said. “Often, we don’t have the big conversations that we need in our relationship. The very act of communicating in difficult times can be as important as the outcome of the conversation. Everybody has the opportunity to engage in a conflict, or not, to say, ‘You’re wrong, I’m right.’ When people are in it for the long term, they are often willing to make sacrifices and view themselves as a team. They both are.”

The couples whose marriages lasted were better at this than the couples who divorced, Bradbury and Karney said.

“The people who ended their marriages would have said they were very committed to the marriage,” Bradbury said. “But they did not have the resolve to say, ‘Honey, we need to work on this; it’s going to be hard, but it’s important.’ The successful couples were able to shift their focus away from whether ‘I win’ or ‘you win’ to ‘Are we going to keep this relationship afloat?’ That is the ideal.”

In a marriage, disagreement is inevitable, but conflict is optional — a choice we make, Bradbury and Karney said. When the psychologists give workshops for couples, they encourage them to discuss a source of disagreement. Finding such a topic is rarely, if ever, a problem.

Sourced from: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/here-is-what-real-commitment-to-228064