Katy Perry and Russell Brand Teach Us How Not to Approach Marriage

“[D]eal with the “we” before you get married so that you don’t have to later ask, what about me?”  Very important advice by Dr. Jane Greer in her Huff Post article, ‘Katy Perry And Russell Brand: How Do You Start Your Marriage Right So It Doesn’t End Wrong?’

Married only 14 months, how did they go from the perfect couple to the perfectly mismatched couple in such a short period of time?

1. They only knew each other for four months before they got married.
2. They come from backgrounds which are polar opposites.  She comes from a strict Christian family and he is a recovering drug addict.
3. They may not have discussed their marital expectations, including:
   • Do we want to have children?  If so, when and how many?
   • Where will we live?
   • Are we planning to focus on our career or our family now and/or when in the future?  If we are focusing on our career, does one spouse take precedence over the other at different times?  (Some celebrity couples, incluing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, I believe, alternate and support the other by taking the family to the partner’s movie set.)

According to Dr. Greer’s article, Russell Brand wanted to settle down and start a family while Katy Perry wanted to focus on her career.  Their argument led to the couple spending the holidays apart.  What we can all learn from the Hollywood example is that every couple must “discuss these defining issues with your partner before you have that expensive wedding, and before you decide to say, “I do.” Without that, you really don’t know what you are agreeing to. Many times people start out with the fantasy and never address the reality and the expectations that brings; each thinks they will deal with issues when the time comes and hope the other will go along with whatever their need is. Or if they had protested before or didn’t want to do something in the past, that somehow you will get them to change their mind. But that doesn’t work, as we see here and as we saw with Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries.”

“Love is a great place to start. That attraction, passion, and mutual devotion can be your diving board but you have to know what pool you are jumping into to make it work. And it has to be about pooling your resources, sharing, and becoming a team. To get there you have to lay out your individual needs and hopes before you have gone too far. Mid-dive is not a good place to realize what lies below isn’t what you were expecting or what you think will make you happy in the long run.”

You need to determine whether you are ready to make that shift from ‘me’ to ‘we’ and what that shift entails.  Only then will you be maturely making the all important decision to marry and make it stick.