A friend of mine shared this article on facebook. It's from the October 7, 2013 post on Greg Smith's blog, if you want to try to find it elsewhere. I take no credit for the writing of this article, but can support most of it from the past four years of marriage.
1. CHOOSE YOUR HABITS WISELY
We are creatures of habit and routine, and that's one of the things that makes marriage work. It’s exhausting to even imagine waking up every day to a partner with random behaviors. We count on our husband or wife liking the same foods, keeping the same schedule, and reacting in predictable ways. Over the years, we fall into these grooves that are very difficult to get out of, and our spouses digs their own grooves parallel to ours, which is why we should choose those grooves very carefully. Bad habits developed early in the marriage—in the bedroom, in the checkbook, around the dinner table, with the in-laws or children, or during arguments—become very difficult to change over the years. They doom us to the same conflicts over and over (see Item #3 below) or cause long term hurts that remain open abrasions and never heal. In some cases they are fatal to the marriage. Within the first few years, you set habits for the next fifty. Choose carefully.
2. MONEY MATTERS.
I know it shouldn’t, but it does, although not necessarily in the same way that some people think. It is true that money cannot buy happiness, and you can certainly be happy without a lot of money. But a marriage is a lot of things, and most of them involve money. You are a household, a home, a family unit—all of these involve spending money for shelter, food, clothing, etc. Everyday, money will flow through your marriage. Sometimes, it will be on the surface, and sometimes it will be like a subterranean river or aquifer, but almost everything you do together will require money, or decisions about money, or the handling of money. More money doesn’t mean a better marriage, but the quality of your marriage absolutely will be affected by how you think about it, how you make decisions about it, and how you handle it. If you do those things together and well, then you can live in marital bliss with barely two sticks to rub together and more won’t necessarily make you happier. If you are incompatible in how you think about money, then you could have a mountain of it and be miserable together—lots of rich people are. Your future together depends not so much on your financial worth as your financial compatibility.
3. YOU WILL HAVE THE SAME HALF-DOZEN FIGHTS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
You won’t have six hundred fights in your marriage; you’ll have six fights a hundred times. The things that lead to real conflict in marriage are our basic points of incompatibility. And unless you married a complete stranger, there are only a handful of those. But here’s the problem: most of us don’t change that much over time. We want to, we try to, but it’s very difficult. And so, to mix a metaphor, wherever our sharp edges clash, our gears grind again and again. Couple A has never fought about issue X, but Couple B has snipped at each other about it for thirty years. Couple A gets so tired of issue Y that they get a divorce over it, but it has never occurred to Couple B to even disagree over it. The solution is obvious, but very difficult: isolate and contain these half dozen problems like the Centers for Disease Control quarantining a virus outbreak, and then try to destroy them with every resource you’ve got. It probably means that both of you will have to change your shape a little bit at those conflict points so that they don’t grind as badly. Every now and then there will be a flare-up on those border points. But when they come, celebrate and enjoy the ninety-four points of agreement between you while you learn to live with the six perpetual challenges.
4. YOU CAN’T BE SURE ABOUT THE THE FUTURE BUT YOU CAN BE SURE ABOUT YOUR BEHAVIOR.
There are no guarantees of what will happen during a marriage, but the whole point of a marriage is to guarantee how we will react, whatever happens. We promise to make it work through good times and bad, sickness and health, wealth and poverty, until death do us part. Whatever life throws at us, we can still choose how we will react, what we will do, and who we will be. But what about the spouse who breaks their vows? A faithful spouse can still wind up with a broken marriage. But they can decide that they will not be the one to break it.
When we allow the possibility, no matter how slender, that we can break our vows if things aren’t turning out like we expected, then failure has become an option and a day will come when that becomes like a light that brings hope in a dark place. If we can break our vows, we will be sorely tempted to do it. Decide that, as much as it is up to you, failure is not an option for your marriage, and that whatever else happens, you will be a promise keeper.
5. IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU OR EVEN THE TWO OF YOU. YOUR MARRIAGE AFFECTS MORE PEOPLE THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW.
You can have a private sexual relationship if that’s what you want. But marriage is not a private affair, and it never has been. That’s why we have witnesses, sign legal documents, and record marriages in public records. A marriage binds two people, but it also joins extended families, entwines property, becomes part of the fabric of communities and churches, makes friends, and produces children. Why do you think those two hundred people were at your wedding? To celebrate that you were having, or going to have, sex and play house with someone? Your marriage is a unit, the basic unit, of society, and society is invested in it. When it fails, lots of people are affected. When lots of marriages fail, it costs society dearly. You are responsible and expected to hold your place in the line in the world’s defense against chaos. Do not abandon your post, because others will suffer if you do.
6. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF SO YOU HAVE SOMETHING GOOD TO GIVE TO YOUR SPOUSE.
In marriage, you give yourself as a gift to another person. But if you let yourself deteriorate, what do you have to offer? Is your personality enjoyable? Are your habits responsible and considerate? Is your heart hopeful, helpful, and honorable? Are your finances in order? And, yes: is your body as attractive as you can reasonably make it? Don’t be surprised if your spouse’s enthusiasm for you sags when your flabby soul or body is sagging because of neglect and self-abuse. Take responsibility for maintaining and even improving yourself. Coldness at the dinner table or in the bedroom is not all his or her fault. Do your best, and offer your best. If he or she doesn't, encourage, but don't nag. Nagging gets you no where. Set an example for giving the best of yourself to the one you love.
7. HERE IS THE BIGGEST REASON MARRIAGES FAIL: TWO PEOPLE SET OUT FOR DIFFERENT DESTINATIONS.
Imagine two sailboats, setting out from the harbor in San Diego, California at the same time, headed to Tahiti. At first, they sail alongside each other. But over time, they gradually drift apart because they have punched different coordinates into their navigation computers. The differences weren’t great enough to notice before departure—the two skippers would have caught the error if they were headed for different continents—but they were off by a degree of latitude. Over a couple of thousand miles of open ocean, that one degree difference means hundreds of miles, and eventually they lose each other over the horizon.
You can never check your navigation too much. Before the marriage, while getting married, every month or week or even day during the marriage, keep comparing and recalibrating. Ask if you are going in the same direction. If not, you will have to make adjustments, or you will lose each other over the horizon. Who makes the adjustment? Who’s right, and who’s wrong? Most of the time, both of you need to make a course correction. Especially because our destinations change over time as we grow and learn and encounter the surprises of life. Get help and work it out.
8. SEX MATTERS.
Really, sex is the reason we get married in the first place. We could have all sorts of other relationships to meet our needs: friends, business partners, roommates, etc. But a man and a woman get married because they are a man and a woman, and they come together as one flesh, most of the time to produce children. Really, that’s the whole point.
There is more to marriage than sex—a lot more—but there should never be less. In other words, if we take sex out, all we are is roommates, parents, business partners, sometimes friends. To put sex in the terminology of formal logic (something we are not normally inclined to do), it is not a sufficient condition for a happy marriage, but it is a necessary one. When we can no longer be intimate, to merge our flesh and not know where one of us begins and the other ends, we have ceased to be man and wife.
But, but, but…yes, there are medical conditions, separations for work or war, seasons when children render us too exhausted to do it. Obviously, all that is true. But those are burdens to be borne with joy or obstacles to be overcome with determination. My wife and I have a friend who says if you can eat outside, you should. In the same spirit, if we can make love, we should. It’s what makes us married.
9. NEITHER OF YOU IS THE MODEL FOR WHAT THE OTHER HAS TO BECOME.
You’re not supposed to become like her, or she like you. Together, the two of you are becoming a third, new thing.
The Bible says that a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. We are both supposed to grow up, blending aspects of each other’s identity into our own and adding into the mix qualities that neither of us had as we learn about life together.
Of course, this isn’t easy. We aren’t destined to become like our parents, but that’s the gravity well into which we are constantly being pulled. It takes energy to escape it. And our own selfish nature constantly demands that our spouse take on our values and style.
It’s one of the greatest joys of life to grow into another person as you both grow older together like two small saplings whose roots and branches entwine over the decades so that you can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.
10. NEVER CRITICIZE YOUR SPOUSE TO OTHERS. THAT CRACKS THE DOOR TO OTHER DISLOYALTIES.
It is so tempting to vent our frustration with our spouse to a friend. We rationalize that a good friend will understand, offering comfort and advice. And when we can’t find a good friend, we’re tempted to criticize our spouse behind their back to an acquaintance, or even a stranger. But when we do, we create a confidant and forge an emotional alliance against the one person in the world to whom we owe complete loyalty. It feels innocent, at first. But in small and subtle ways, we are driving a wedge in our marriage. Our wife or husband becomes “her” or “him,” the Other whom we seek support against. That support may be nothing more than a nod of the head, a chuckle, or a pat on the arm. But an important shift has occurred. And what begins with that small gesture doesn’t always end there. Do not open the door to disloyalty to your husband or wife, even a little bit.
