A Marriage Tune up
Marriage is neither an art nor a science. It’s a journey. Having a pleasant experience driving somewhere depends on many factors: the company in the car, the directions to the location, enough money to make it, the kind of vehicle to get there, and whether you remembered everything you needed to bring. In my marriage journey, we have 24 years of mileage accumulated. If we don’t get a tune-up every once in a while, it will make the journey more laborious than it needs to be. Here are my top 3 things that keep our marriage tuned up.
Rev your engines…
Learn to speak in their heart language:
What I mean by this is that you rewire your brain to consider their heart before yours. I know it is most of our natural propensity to want to be understood. If we are not feeling good vibes from our spouse, we start to shut the doors of our hearts. That is the coward’s way out. To understand the other makes it so the other will want to understand you on a deeper level. But learning a new language isn’t easy. In fact, the older you get the more challenging it is to learn a new language because the neural pathways in your brain have been set. To start blazing new ones for an additional language means work. This is the same dilemma we face when learning the heart language of our spouse. It’s not a different tongue, but more of a different tone, words, and body language. When we have been set in our ways for so long, we think our spouse should find out how we got there. I can’t stress enough that learning how to communicate with them at the heart level is one of the most intimate investments you can make in order to secure your marriage. There will be a learning curve as you try different topics. You’ll learn that, depending on the timing, certain things might stress them out or bore them. You will learn that some things are stimulating and fun and can turn their day around. When you are fluent with their heart language, they will keep their heart protected from those who would take advantage of them. All of us desire to communicate at the heart level and marriage is the place to learn it.
Out-serve your spouse:
Another nail in the coffin for our natural selfish tendencies is found in service. The greatest and most powerful leadership is demonstrated through service. Imagine if the unspoken contest in your marriage was that both of you have made silent commitments to out-serve the other. We often have exhausting jobs; on top of having children, we have to respond to their beck and call. What is so appealing about serving one more person? Our jobs compensate our service with money. Our children are usually costly and take the money our jobs compensated us with. Now when it comes to our spouses, the service we render them results in feeling love and respect. The service to our spouse – if done right – will feel more like a dance than a chore. I am talking about a hot and heavy dance, not an awkward dance where you look like you’re being attacked by bees. The harmony of one spouse elevating the other after a day of work is beautiful. This harmony can be achieved through making them coffee (or in my case hot tea), getting them into a warm pair of slippers with soft classical music in the background while the food is cooking, or preparing a warm bath with candles and a nice love note left there for them to read. Are you telling me that if you serve your spouse in this way from time to time that you will go unrewarded? Even simple acts of service such as a sweet text to remind them that you still say, “I do,” or cleaning up a long-neglected refrigerator or laundry room. When you look to out-serve the other no one will ever feel neglected or taken advantage of. This is another intimacy builder that guarantees you’ll have a lot of children (if that is something you want).
Have healthy marriages around you to learn from:
“I like how she did that.”
“Did you see how he responded to her?”
These are statements that come from my wife and I after we leave the company of some great married couples we have the privilege of knowing. We learn what we might not do as well from what they do well. Having healthy marriages around us is like holding a mirror up to our own marriage—we are able to give ourselves honest assessments of where we are with things. It also takes away from the story we tell ourselves that good, loving, happily-ever-after marriages don’t exist. We can read books or go to conferences that give us information, but for implementation’s sake, we will need to be at arm’s length from those people who carry the goods of a healthy marriage. They are either around us or need to be sought out. On the opposite side, if all we see are those who are barely making it, don’t like each other, or are superficial about themselves, then this will normalize for us what marriage isn’t supposed to look like. A healthy marriage doesn’t mean they don’t get mad at each other in front of you or say something that makes everyone uncomfortable once in a while. It means even in their uncommon moments of marital tension they love each other and will remain respectful by not going overboard. If you are not around marriages that challenge your marriage to get better in one area or another, then you are robbing yourself of the richness found in those relationships.
Those are my three pieces of advice. I hope you do something with them if you are married.