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 and RISE UP coaching workshops and works with clients nationwide as a personal life coach. You can contact her, order her new book and get more information at RoxanneParks.com. She would be honored to connect with you.