This last week Charity and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. As we’ve talked about this milestone I’ve joking said: “These have been the best 10 years of your life Charity!” The reality is, this has been the best 10 years of my life!
I don’t have a list of the top 5 things you need to have a healthy marriage. I’m not going to share my 7 failures in marriage. Nor have I done a hours of research on stats to tell you 25 things to stay married for 25 years. I just want to share a handful of things people have shared with me and I’ve tried to apply to our marriage.
Kiss Before Bed
I’m pretty sure it was on our wedding night, or maybe a few months before, an older man I respect said this to me: “Kiss her every night before bed.” Now I love kissing my wife. When you tell an engaged man to kiss his wife every night before bed its a great idea so we did this. As I began traveling for ministry and school there were nights we couldn’t kiss. We tried our best to talk on those nights but just with being apart we couldn’t kiss; we wanted to though!
The longer we stayed married, as you could imagine, there were times we didn’t want to kiss. There were nights when we argued or just weren’t talking before bed. We didn’t feel like kissing. Most of this was probably my fault, I’m stubborn and brought a ton of baggage to our marriage. It has forced us to talk. Sometimes the kisses were colder and some nights they were steamy, but we’ve made it a point to kiss every night before bed.
Fight Well
One of my earliest memories of my parents is seeing my dad physically harming my mom. I was young and don’t recall the entire situation but I know my mom was crying and my dad was inflicting the pain. This obviously had scared me. I can’t recall a time when I saw my parents fight well. They fought, but not well.
With my past and the education we’ve both received, we’ve learned to fight well (please note the word learned). Fighting well doesn’t mean you just bury the pain deep inside (think; Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights). Fighting well doesn’t mean you just say whatever is on your mind.
Fighting well means you implement better ways of communion. One could be to use “mirroring”. Mirroring is a technique where you repeat back to the person what they said to make sure you understand them. Another method is to just simply listen and not interupt. Another application is to pray for wisdom while your listening. Fighting well has been a success to a healthy marriage, we are going to fight so let’s do it well.
Laugh Often
One of my favorite things in life is to hear Charity laugh. Actually, when were dating, she had such a loud laugh it made me smile. Charity still laughs a whole bunch when we’re together. The more we laugh, the more we enjoy life. When we are laughing its a sign to me that we are enjoying the company of each other. It reminds me how much fun we have together. It reminds me of the joy of life we share.
Submit to Each Other
This can be a tough one for couples. As humans we desire to be in control of our life and our situation. We want to take control and make our destiny. In a marriage it can be easy for one spouse to be domineering and demand to get their way. They can ignore their spouses feelings and selfishly care only about themselves.
The Bible talks about men and women submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ. This means that I don’t always get my way. This means that I need to listen, carefully, to my wife. I need to hear what she is saying when a decision must be made. I also need to listen carefully to God so my family makes the right decision. We believe in an equal voice in our marriage.
Have Sex
What would a good marriage post be without talking about sex! Someone once told me that if couples in their first year of marriage put a gum ball in a jar every time they had sex in the first year of marriage and then took one out every time they had sex the next five years there would still be gum balls in the jar. That is sad!
We have decided to maintain intimacy (obviously, we’re having our third kid). But it means meeting each others needs. It means sex isn’t just about getting what you want and rolling over. Its about growing as a couple and learning each other. Now you might be thinking: “This is weird reading this.” And it’s a little weird writing it, but if I don’t you might just keep thinking that what you see about sex in the movies is normal.
There is a trend in our culture to believe that you meet a person, take them to dinner and then have sex with them. We have such an over-saturation of porn that many people have no clue what sex in a marriage relationship looks like. I’m sure there are great books you can read to learn more. My point is the need to maintain sexual intimacy, mainly sex, in the marriage relationship. Have such a great marriage that you can’t imagine not having sex with that person!
1 comment:
Great post Neal. I enjoyed reading your words and marriage tips!
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