Tag: relationships

Why Relationships Matter

Have you ever asked yourself why your marriage matters? Why do you have to be the one to have a successful relationship? Most of us have never really thought about our marriage, our friendships or any other relationships that we have and how they affect the world around us. Why does it matter?

Why My Marriage Matters

My parents got divorced when I was in high school. Children from divorce usually have one or two responses. The first response is that they want nothing to do with marriage. They didn’t have an example of a successful marriage so they don’t see the value in marriage. The second response is that children from divorce want what they didn’t see. They set out to make sure their marriage is one that lasts. I choose the second response. Why does your relationship matter?

 

  1. As human beings we need relationships. It doesn’t really surprise me that something as great as social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) which was designed to bring people closer together has actually had the opposite effect. People are feeling more and more alone.

Our spouse should be the primary relationship that we have. It should be foundational for our lives. That’s not to say that your spouse has to be your best friend, but they should be a basis for our relationships.

 

  1. Your relationship is a model. Whether we want to admit or not, our marriages, friendships and our relationships in general are a model for our children at the least. The way in which you act in relationships is how your children will act in theirs.

I know that this can be hard to balance. We don’t want the motivation for our relationships to be that we are modeling them for someone else or to live up to someone else’s expectation. However, we have to know that as my example of my parents’ divorce, our marriages leave an impression on our children. Good or bad it leaves an impression.

 

  1. Relationships are vital to our health. I don’t have all the stats, but it makes sense that healthy relationships make you feel better. Negative relationships can cause stress and other health-related issues. We should want to be in healthy relationships. A healthy marriage should be one of our top priorities.

 

Discussion Question:

How do you value your relationships?

 

Love Changes

Love changes over time. Accept the fact. We can’t run from it or hide from it. It’s going to change. Are we prepared for the changes is another matter. Can we go with the changes and make sure that we don’t lose the love. That really should be how we view it love. It’s okay if it changes, but we can’t lose it or let it become dormant.

I’ve been married to my wife for almost 9 years now, and even in that time our love has changed. While we were dating, newlyweds and the beginning of our marriage everything was great. We would spend every chance we got talking on the phone or taking walks around town. It might have been typical for two people who were falling in love with each other and building a relationship. For us, it was special and began to lay the foundation for us.

Now, we’re at the point where we have been married for a little bit of time. We have two young children and we’re setting the foundations for our family. Has our love changed from those early days? Absolutely, and it should change as we change throughout our lifetime. As our marriage grows and changes, our love should change with it.

Love should change as you grow as a person Click To Tweet

Love changes over time. Well, it should. It should grow as you grow as a person and it should grow as your relationship grows. There is beauty in the growth and changes that can happen in love. How do you embrace the changes in love?

 

  1. Expect the changes to come

 

Some of the hardest changes in life are when they are unexpected. An unexpected loss of a job, or the unexpected change in a friendship, or an unexpected change in our health are all very hard things to adjust to in life. In terms of love and the love in our marriages, we should expect it to grow. Don’t expect that it will stay the same as when you were dating. Your love should change as you do.

 

  1. Communicate through the changes

 

A lot of couples fail and a lot of marriages fail because of the lack of communication. The longer that you are with someone means that there is a greater need for quality communication. Quality communication is different than just talking to someone. Quality means involving yourself into the conversation. The longer that you are with someone, you have to have more quality conversations because you tend to know more of the details about them. Growing as a person shows us that quality conversations are needed to keep the connections strong.

 

  1. Date Nights are essential

 

There nothing that will lead to the love in your marriage becoming stale or non-existent more than not spending time together. Regular date nights are the cure to that. Date nights will help you communicate and have quality conversations. While each date may not be the over the top, birds singing, stuff of movies, but each date can be an opportunity to strengthen your marriage.

 

Discussion Question

How has your love changed?

 

Big Actions vs Small Actions

Types of People

What type of person are you? Are you the one that likes to go all out on birthdays and anniversaries? Or are you the one that likes to do small things over consistently over time. I know that this may seem a like a weird question, but the point that I want to make is that we tend to be more into the first category. A lot of us men tend to only show our wives love on the major days. Her birthday, Valentine’s Day, and our anniversary are the major times each year where we know we’re supposed to get it right. While we think that this is a good thing, in reality it is just scratching the starting point and we should be the second type.

At the beginning of this year my wife and I set a goal that we were going to work even harder at our relationship. It’s not that we were having troubles, we just knew there was room to improve. We recognized that with  two small children and very busy schedules, life can be happening all around us and we want to make sure that we’re moving together. Things are good, but we want them to be better. So we decided to commit to make a love deposit each month.

Love grows over time, not in the number of likes or comments on social media Click To Tweet

Love Deposits

A love deposit is our way of saying that we want to do something for the other person that speaks their love language. If you haven’t I would read The 5 Love Languages, I would highly recommend it. They even have versions for children, singles and so many more.

Having this approach is better than hitting the major days that I talked about earlier. This is what it can do for you.

 

  1. Allows for relationship maintenance

Maintenance is always better than repair. You don’t want to reach the breaking point where everything needs to be fixed. Relationship maintenance is better than having an explosive fight. Doing something every month for your spouse makes this possible.

 

  1. Helps to make sure you don’t forget the Big Ones

If you’re doing something for your spouse every month, it will help you so you don’t forget the Big Days. If we’re doing something every month for our spouse then we’re training our minds to always think about them in a new way. Not in a nagging, or a irritated way, but in a way that is loving.

 

  1. Keeps you connected to your spouse

We’re people and we change over time. Making  small deposits every month, lets your spouse know how important they are to you and helps to keep you connected to what is going on with them as a person. There’s no worse feeling than planning something elaborate for your spouse only to have them respond with a lackluster response.  Sometimes the things we thought would make a huge deposit, don’t even make a dent because we’re not as connected to our spouse as we thought. It is naive of us to think that our spouse will be the same person as when we first started dating. We shouldn’t treat them the same way either.

 

This is “love month.” Don’t wait to show your spouse to care. Do something small that will make a deposit to their heart.

 

Discussion Question:

Has your love language changed over time?