Marriage is the utlimate proving grounds to becoming more like God. When I was younger, I remember listening to my parents argue a lot. I also thought to myself, “Geez, i’m never going to argue, yell at, or complain about my wife!”
Little did I know, that marriage really does test your patience, temper, and attitude. Once we started having kids, it got a lot more difficult to communicate and spend quality time with each other. However, as I’ve studied so far in this class, I’m beginning to realize that a lot of the changes that need to be made to better our relationship, need to come from me, not from her.
For example, spending time each week on an actual date. This is a little obvious, but for us, it’s been a difficult thing to prioritize. It’s so easy to justify it not happening. “We can’t afford a baby sitter.” “I don’t trust anyone to watch our kids…” The list goes on, but in the end, it’s up to us to sacrifice whatever we may be holding on to (money, stress, worry) and realize that it’s VITAL that we invest in our relationship. I had the realization earlier this week when reading, that weekly dates are not an expense, but they’re an investment. The “return on investment” yields better communication, more closeness, decreased stress, increased happiness, better alignment on goals and desires, and so much more. We finally went on a date last week for the first time in almost 6 months, and we were able to talk about really important things, like our plans for the future and how we want to grow our family. Had we not sacrificed the time, potential stress & worry to go on this date, we wouldn’t have made all the emotional progress we made together during that time together.
The one thing I know that I need to work on to better our marriage and relationship is to take better care of my physical health. For too long I’ve been lazy with exercise and poor eating habits. It’s reflected in less energy, poor sleep patterns, and more perceived laziness. I can see that this has had an effect on my wife because I can tell that she wants to me to be healthier, and is concerned for me. I know that if I make my health more of a priority and demonstrate that i’m taking better care of myself, this will help her feel heard, and that i’m reciprocating the self-care that I need into better care for her and our family.
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