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My Relationship Teens
My Relationship Teens
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Three Steps to Happily Ever After
If your dreams for the future include romance, marriage, and children, you should be aware that choices you are making today can really affect your chances for a happy marriage in the future. You may think those things have to do with dating, and you're partly right. Dating is an important part of the teen experience - not because it shows your value as a person; you're valuable simply for who you are. But dating is only one step in learning to build healthy relationships. The most important step is learning to be a healthy you. If your parents have a healthy, loving marriage, you're already learning how to be a strong husband or wife. If, like many of us, you haven't experienced a great example at home, there's good news: Healthy marriages are based on relationship skills that you can learn through study and practice. Our class, How to Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk(ette), teaches you to choose a relationship that is safe and healthy. Love U2: Relationship Smarts Plus helps you practice good communication and conflict resolution-skills that will not only help you in dating, but also will help you get along better with friends and family. For class schedules, visit our classes page. Check with your Health teachers and your Family and Consumer Sciences teachers to see what might be offered in your school as an elective too. The most critical choices you can make to boost your chances of a successful marriage are taking these three steps:
1. Finish Your Education
A high school degree is essential to your future. A college degree can significantly increase your earning power, which makes a big difference when you have children. The current estimated cost of raising just one child to age 17 is $269,520.
2. Get a Job
Establish financial security and learn to manage a household on your own. If you move right out of your parents' house into a house you share with a partner, you're just exchanging one kind of dependence for another. On the other hand, consider a career and life path that includes marriage by age 30. Studies show marriages that begin in the 20s have the highest rates of happiness and success.
3. Get Married Before You Have Children
Once you're established and looking for a committed relationship, hold out for marriage. There are many reasons living together is just not the same as marriage - including the increased likelihood the relationship will end. And marriage is definitely best for your kids. Study after study shows that children who are born into a marriage and grow up with their two parents do better emotionally, physically, academically, and socially. Kids who grow up with divorced or single parents don't do as well, on average, and often live in poverty for at least part of their life.
Follow these three steps - and take the time to learn healthy relationship skills and become the healthiest person you can be - and your dreams of "happily ever after" are far more likely to come true.
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| Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 July 2010 18:56 |