Marriage Mattersنموونە

More Marriage Matters

Here are some additional suggestions (in random order) to enhance your marriage experience.

• Catch your spouse in the act of doing something good or positive. Then verbalize it.
• Love takes work. Ask your spouse if they would be willing to work towards a great marriage with you.
• Spend quality time with each other – while understanding that each spouse has other time commitments.
• Recognize each spouse needs some space for personal autonomy.
• Show interest in each other opinions, ideas, work, and activities. There is so much you can learn from one another. 
• Physical touches like hugging, holding hands and other simple physical gestures are vital no matter what the couple’s sexual life is like.
• Practice generosity of thought, spirit, and action towards each other,
• Acknowledge there are other important people in each spouse’s life: friends, their family, colleagues, etc.
• Make time and create opportunities to have fun and laugh together often.
• Develop communication skills. Especially be a good listener.
• Dream together….if not regularly….at least quarterly.
• Be sure to set-aside time weekly (date night) to prioritize time for you two. Your kids need to see this! Have some fun times planned.
• Daily plan a random act of kindness towards your spouse….not meals or normal routine stuff. Something unusual.
• Keep a strong relationship with the Lord as often times you will need God alone to love your spouse through you.
• Practice the habit of happiness…would you like to be married to you?
• Seek wisdom about your marriage from above. Ask God to teach you how to love your spouse better. Study 1 Cor 13.
• Work with your spouse to create a mission/vision statement for your marriage and family. 
• Never put your spouse on a guilt trip or shame them with your tone of voice. If you slip into this, then quickly apologize as God never shames us!
• Ask your spouse what things you do that they love and what things you do that irritate them and then learn to be better…. not perfect…but better.
• Study your spouse’s love language (The Five Love Languages book by Gary Chapman)and be sure to speak it to them. When in doubt, speak a bit of each love language regularly (touch, words, gifts, time, service).
• Become a student of your spouse and get a Ph.D. in them. Learn how to better understand and love them from their point-of-view.
• Take some form of personality test for a greater understanding of one another.
• Consider taking a marriage-based “strengths assessment” to enhance marital understanding.
• Set personal boundaries around extra-marital relationships
• Say something nice, kind, or up-lifting to your spouse daily.
• Develop close quality couple friendships that will uphold, encourage and inspire your marriage
• Develop life-giving girl/guy friends outside your marriage to help satisfy your relational needs.

Ponder:

Since marriages really do matter, name some ways that you can be more intentional about addressing additional “marriage matters” listed above. Highlight and initiate a plan to improve together.

Prayer:

Lord, we know that marriages matter. We also know that marriages are Your chosen way to build families. Help us to be cognizant of greater ways to love one another. 

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PLAN END NOTE: Roxanne's passion is to speak life-giving truths into the hearts of others. She loves to speak at retreats and conventions. She hosts her own DEEPER Intensive workshops and works with clients nationwide as a personal life coach. You can contact her and get more information at RoxanneParks.com. She would be honored to connect with you.