How to sustain your marriage

Yesterday, we examined the passage about divorce and saw that Jesus calls his followers to a higher standard than the world around us. He desires for us to sustain our marriages, yet how do we do that? To be honest, I have been married for a year now, and am just now learning the surface of what it means to be married. So I feel very inadequate to write about this topic for you today. So I have been collecting bits and pieces of wisdom from people who are a lot older than me and who have been at this marriage thing for a lot longer than I have. So here are some great tips for different things to do to sustain your marriage.

Date your spouse.

That's right, one of the major things that old married couples told me they did to sustain their marriages was that they continued to date each other throughout their marriage. They carved out specific time on a regular basis to go on dates with each other, the way they did before they were married. When I asked them about what happened when they had kids and weren't able to go on dates, they said that they made it work because it was that much of a priority. They budget their money and make an intentional effort to pay for baby sitters so they could continue to go on dates with each other. Some said they had a deal with another married couple, to where one weekend they would watch their kids and the other couple's kids and the other couple would go on a date, and then the next weekend that couple would watch all the kids and they would go on a date. These married couples told me, this is so vitally important that it is worth being creative or the financial investment to make sure you are able to continue dating each other.

Another tip that I learned from these couples was to carve out specific time to talk about your marriage and conflict outside of conflict.

I was talking to a mentor of mine and he helped me realize that the only time I ever try to work on our marriage is when we are in the midst of conflict. My mentor told me that neither of us are thinking clearly and are in good positions to really evaluate ourselves clearly in the midst of heated conflict. So he told me that his wife and him, once a week, talk about their marriage and how they are dealing with conflict. This is an intentional set aside time that they are able to talk about their marriage outside of heated conflict. Another couple told me that they read from a marriage book every night together before they go to bed, and this spurs on a lot of discussion that really helps their communication. Here are some of the books they recommended:

1. Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs
2. Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas
3. For Men Only by Shaunti Feldhahn and Jeff Feldhahn and For Women Only  by Shaunti Feldhahn

They said that reading these books together gave them a safe place outside of heated conflict to work on their marriage and that they both were able to communicate more clearly, especially when it came to taking criticism from each other. 

Another tip that I learned for guys was this...pursue your wife. 

She wants to know that you love her and that you are going to continue to pursue her for the rest of your life. I don't care what you have done in the past, or what she has said in the past, but buy your wife flowers, buy her chocolates, plan a special date for her, take her to see a chick flick, do something that only she enjoys but give yourself completely to it. Maybe even go to hobby lobby, buy a craft and do it with your wife, I don't know, get creative. But your wife needs to know that she is the most important person to you and that she is worth pursuing. The pursuit doesn't end at the altar, it ends at the burial site. 

And women, here is the tip I learned for you....become your husband's biggest fan. 

Brag about him to your friends, post about him on Facebook, go to his softball games, basketball games, car shows. Tell him not that you love him but that you are proud of him and how good he is at what he does. Tell him that he does a good job washing dishes, mowing the lawn, cleaning up his stuff. Guys want to know that what they do makes you respect them. This means more to us than saying our eyes look pretty with that shirt on. Guys want their wives to be the girls that wear their letter jackets, go to their rock concerts and put their awards and trophies on display for the world to see. 

Men need to know that their wives admire them. 

And the last tip I was told by these very wise (old) couples, is to pray together. I was told over and over again to pray together every day. Couples after couples told me that after dinner they sit down and pray for each other, or when they got up in the morning, or right before they went to bed. I don't care when it is, it doesn't matter, but carve out specific time to pray with your spouse. This will become one of your favorite times during the day. It is very hard to hold a grudge or be hateful to someone that you are praying for and with daily. 

These are just some tips that I have been taught on how to sustain my marriage, hopefully they are beneficial to you.