Tips for a Stronger Marriage

Hello Friends! If you’ve caught some of my more recent posts than you know I’ve been working on my husbands new office space for his company, and in all my time I’ve spent over there lately it’s gotten me to do a lot of thinking and reflecting on our marriage. Tomorrow we celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary, and I thought it would be fun to share some of my reflective thoughts with all of you. In case you are in need of some encouragement, or perhaps a different point of view. Or maybe just a closer look into our marriage. So today, I’m taking a break from painting, and home decor, to talk about our married life.

I refer to him here on the blog as “the muscle to my madness”, and while that is 100% true most of the time, my husband is also my biggest encourager, and the reason I still continue to chase down big dreams to this day. We’ve learned a lot in the fourteen years we’ve been married, and experienced a lot, and believe me when I say this friends, I know we still have a lot of years to learn in front of us.

Reflecting over the past fourteen years and how much we have grown together as a couple, I have narrowed it down to the TOP 3 things that I think contribute to our marriage being a success. So I wanted to share those with you~

#1. Don’t Be Afraid of Change

If you had told me this when we first got married, I would have looked at you in fear thinking “why would we want to change?”. But that fact is, any healthy thing that is growing, therefore change is inevitable. In fact it has to change so it will evolve and not die. You could say it’s one of those statements that only “time will tell”, because it’s true, time does have to go by. But looking back at the two kids we were when we got married, we are not the same people today we were back then, and I’m so glad!

Back then we were selfish, and cared more about our own needs being met, rather than each others. We were young, and had a lot to learn about just how much work it takes to keep a relationship growing. You have to put in effort, otherwise your relationship will suffer. Think of what happens when we don’t water our house plants? YIKES! I do not want that to be a representation of my marriage.

I think I was also scared of change because I thought it meant that if one of us changed then we would grow apart, and I did not want that to happen. But change can bring about good things. We encouraged each other when we saw growth, and even more so it inspired us to want to grow more as a person too. We spurred each other on, and encouraged personal development, because when you are a growing individually your marriage is benefitting from it too.

Change became something that was exciting because it meant personal growth was happening, which ultimately meant we were growing closer as a married couple as well. We celebrate each others success’, and take time to have honest conversations on areas we need to try better in.

#2. Be a helpmate.

I will never forget this one night we were attending a bible study at our church, and an older lady shared how one of the ways she supported her husband was being a good helpmate. They were celebrating 40+ years of marriage, and it got me thinking “am I a helpmate”?

Sure I took care of the house, and cooked him meals, and made sure he had clean clothes in his drawers, but what other areas could I be a better helpmate to my husband in? As my husbands business has grown, it has meant that there have been seasons where he has had to put in extra hours, which meant very long days. When you are the one running the show, you stay well past when everyone else has gone home to make sure everything gets down so the business can keep moving forward. For a time, I begrudgingly would kiss him off to work, dreading that his long hours, meant longs days for this tired mama too. But with this new term “helpmate” in the forefront of my mind, I began to focus on areas in our marriage that I could help lighten his load. Some days it meant I stacked the cord wood, and brought it in from our shed, so he wouldn’t have to spend an hour doing so in the dark when he would finally get him from work. Other times it meant me picking up some of his slack around the house so he could put all his attention at work. And sometimes it simply meant making sure he had a warm meal to come home too, especially on the nights I didn’t feel like cooking.

During those early days of discovering what it meant to be a helpmate, it taught us how to serve one another better. How to walk side by side with each other, even if it wasn’t literally, it reinforced my love for him, letting him know “I’ve got your back”, and return he stepped up more, helping me around the house when I would get busy, or have opportunities that would come from blogging. And together we became a better team.

#3. Say I’m Sorry Quickly

This one didn’t always come easy for me. If I’m being completely honest, I can be a bit stubborn, which means I can also be a little difficult to get along with. I am so thankful for my husbands grace that he has shown me even early on in the first years of our marriage. Often times he would remind me when we would argue that “we were on the same side”. The fact of the matter is, there are bound to be disagreements, and tough times. But learning to navigate through them in the mentality that you are in it together, can sometimes be all you need to defuse the bomb in front of you. Through his gentleness, I learned that the quicker I went to him and apologized, the less things would fester. Think of it this way, it’s like cleaning out the fridge, before the leftovers have time to grow mold on them. Nobody likes to deal with that stink, and unresolved issues, or unsaid apologies can stink up a marriage pretty quickly. Left unattended, and sometimes the whole leftover container needs to be thrown out. Say I’m sorry quickly. It’s the best thing you can do for your marriage. Remember when you are on the same side, it’s not about who’s right, and pointing out who’s wrong. It’s realizing that while we may not agree on this completely, I love you, and don’t want to argue with you, so I’m sorry for how I reacted. I still feel bad for how stubborn I was in our early days of marriage, desperately wanting to always be right, and I’m so thankful I married a man who is filled with some God-given patience to deal with me sometimes.

Babe – I love you!

I hope you have found this encouraging, regardless of where you are in married life journey, or even if you are single. If I could share anything with you it would be this – Marriage is great! It takes work, you both have to be willing to put in effort, and remember that you are on the same team!