{"id":38657,"date":"2023-06-26T04:32:19","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T10:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/?p=38657"},"modified":"2025-08-04T08:58:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T14:58:03","slug":"merging-schedules-as-newlyweds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boundless.org\/relationships\/merging-schedules-as-newlyweds\/","title":{"rendered":"Merging Schedules as Newlyweds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe go through food phases,\u201d I reminisced with my husband, Ted. \u201cRemember when we were first married and ate teriyaki chicken, rice and broccoli all<\/em> the time?\u201d<\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t stop there. I added, \u201cAnd we\u2019d eat at 9 p.m. every night?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was so dumb,\u201d Ted replied \u2014 not to what <\/em>we ate, but when <\/em>we ate it. He didn\u2019t elaborate, but I was confident I knew what he was thinking. Back then, we ate late because of his<\/em> schedule.<\/p>\n

The company he worked for was pretty relaxed, allowing him to set the start and end times for his workdays. As long as he put in enough hours, his boss was OK if he arrived around 10 a.m. and left about 8 or 9 p.m. So that\u2019s what Ted did.<\/p>\n

But while he enjoyed the flexibility and freedom, there was one casualty from it \u2014 my expectations. I grew up eating dinner around 5:30 p.m. and continued that when I moved away to attend grad school. When Ted and I married, I assumed \u2014 note the word assumed<\/em> here \u2014 that we would do the same. I was sadly mistaken.<\/p>\n

3 practical steps to marry your schedules<\/h4>\n

Eating dinner at an agreed-upon time wasn\u2019t the only schedule challenge we struggled with as newlyweds. It turns out that marrying our schedules was a big issue for us in many areas.<\/p>\n

In addition to our dinnertimes, we had to navigate synching our bedtimes. I was an early-to-sleep girl while Ted was a late-to-bed guy. There was also the challenge of finding a middle ground between my early-to-arrive-places nature and Ted\u2019s always-running-late one. Even the time it took us at the grocery store was drastically different. I quickly and methodically shopped only the aisles I needed to save time, while Ted tended to meander and make more of an \u201cexperience\u201d out of it.<\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019re in a serious relationship headed toward marriage, you\u2019re getting married soon, or you\u2019re a newlywed. If so, let me encourage you not to wait until dinner is literally getting cold on the table to discuss and devise a plan to marry your schedules in a way you\u2019re both comfortable.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where many might argue that living together before marriage is the perfect remedy to determine if you\u2019re compatible schedule-wise. But we\u2019re not called to live by what the \u201cmany\u201d in our culture say. We\u2019re called to live within God\u2019s good boundaries, and when we study His Word, we see His plan is marriage first, living together second.<\/p>\n

So where do you start when combining your schedules? Here are a few things Ted and I have learned over the last 20 years of marriage.<\/p>\n

1. Share schedule preferences.<\/h5>\n

This fall, one of our daughters starts her first year of college. Yep, we\u2019re that <\/em>old.<\/p>\n

As our daughter completed her housing application a few months ago, she answered questions about living with a roommate. You\u2019re probably familiar with the type of questions she was asked, but if not, here are a few examples:<\/p>\n