Enjoy all the passion of your young love. In marriage God blesses our sexuality and the outcomes of sexual expression in marriage are almost always blessings. To engage outside of marriage almost always creates stress, negative results and eventually emotional pain, and now even death.

Seek influence with one another rather than control. This means no ultimatums. Negotiate, barter, take turns, but whatever you do end with an agreement both of you can live with.

The last two vacations we took a cruise, and I am not really a cruise fanatic. The pampering, food and tropical winter weather are great, but the rather active routine of up for breakfast, onshore activity and back, get ready for dinner (which I actually enjoy) and whatever dancing or show or , yes, karaoke, on a daily basis doesn't make for a very relaxing vacation. Its a whole lot of really good fun, but not really relaxing. You are always checking the time on a cruise.

I prefer a more relaxing vacation, but I have a lot of fun when we go cruising, especially since we have found some really great people to travel with, so next year we plan to go and stay somewhere. We will probably plan a couple of adventures, but the other days will not be scheduled, lots of napping or stretched out on a beach chair reading or just having cocktails and chewing the fat with whomever is around at the time. Lots of time barefoot with long beach walks, like when we traveled with other friends to Negril, Jamaica for several years straight after which my Boo wanted to try seven day cruising which we did for several years until this latest ten day sailing.

In all your negotiations you must always remember that you will not be happy if your spouse is not happy. So when we accommodate one another, we know we are both going to bring a positive and cooperative attitude on either a cruise or a go and stay getaway. We will both enjoy either. Its kind of a “its about us” attitude rather than “its about me”.

And yes, sometimes the negotiations can get emotional, and that's Okay. You two have so much to learn and accept about one another and quite often its when we are trying to reconcile a difference when we learn things about our partner's preferences and perspectives. The best way to deal with these is to accept them or take the time and energy to try to expose them to something different. How a person feels is not right or wrong, just based on their knowledge or experiences. Help them learn different or add to their experiences and they may change, but always remember everybody is grown and raised.

And when you feel upset and must argue just share how you feel about what happened. Please don't start off accusing your partner of doing something to you on purpose. This early in marriage, it is more likely that your partner has no idea that some things bother you so much, or what bothers you. Just because your people and childhood were a certain way doesn't mean your partner grew up with the same proprieties.

All this effort assumes you intend to grow old with someone really special, and part of the trick is to know that neither of you is anyway near as wonderful a person you will become as you make your marriage work for yourselves, your children and your community by loving, caring and making space for one another and leading others to do the same.

Happy New Year newly weds, we so need you to succeed.