My husband and I will be celebrating 10 years of marriage this Saturday and we still enjoy each other's company. Here are my 6 tips for sustaining a healthy marriage.
- Communicate Often: We have to learn how to work together. What works for one season in your marriage will not always get you through the next. Discern and recognize when it's time to make a shift and reevaluate how things are going. For example, it may beneficial when first starting out for one person to be primarily responsible for taking care of the household budget, however you may find as your family grows and time commitments change the other person may need to take this on.
- Fight Fair: Learn how to fight fair. Early in our relationship before we got married we created ground rules for dealing with conflict. We don't raise our voice at each other, we don't call each other out of name, and we don't hit below the belt. Because we are on the same team, we choose daily to respect each other.
- Compliment each other: There is nothing worse than hearing your spouse gives everyone but you compliments. That should not be the case. Sometimes when things get busy or we are under stress we can forget to nurture those closest to us. It's so important to speak life into the one you became one with. We have to be intentional about saying kind things to our spouse. If this is an area of strength for you, but your spouse falls short, be sure to express your need for encouragement and kind words.
- Pray together and for each other: This right here I can't emphasize enough! I distinctly remember a tough season where I needed my husband to hear my heart and make a decision based on my needs. At the time he couldn't see what I "needed" him to see. I was in the process of demanding an answer from him when God stopped me in my tracks and told me, you can't change his heart. So my question to God was, what am I supposed to do? God reminded me that I was to make my request known to Him, I now go to the Father before addressing situations with my husband. God gives me insight and discernment and helps me to approach my husband in a way that honors Him. We are still working on getting more prayer time together, but I can tell you I know how to petition heaven on behalf of my husband!
- Serve each other: We typically do this well in the dating phase. I read a book once called Life Long Love Affair by Jimmy Evans. In it he talked about serving your spouse in the good and the bad. I can honestly say it works. Even when we have our disagreements I still continue to serve my husband. It's my way of showing him that despite the way I feel, I still choose to do the right thing and honor him. When we do the right thing for the right reasons God is pleased!
- Have fun together: This is another thing we do well while dating and the early years of marriage. My husband and I actually have decided going forward we are recommitting to this area and are choosing to have more fun in our marriage. We laugh a lot together. My husband is one of the funniest people I know, however, with the busyness of work and 4 kids sometimes we are just down right exhausted. Men need to have fun, so make sure that you are finding ways to keep it light whether it is…going to the movies, rock climbing, taking on a new hobby that you both enjoy. We are actually honoring our comment to more fun by taking our 10 year wedding anniversary trip kid free! Can’t wait to share our adventure with you when we get back
I want to hear from you! How do you keep your marriage alive and healthy? Please share in the comments. If you found this article helpful please pass it along! Sharing is caring!