Like I said in previous posts, I am no expert and I am not saying I know what every marriage needs but I do want to share what God has taught my husband and I in the years we have been married. I would like to share what principles have worked for us and what hasn’t worked.... So feel free to take what principles you can use in your home and discard the ones you can’t—
I am a firm proponent of spending time together with just you and your spouse. I totally get that once kids come into the mix...spending quality time connecting with our spouse is HARD!!! Often, taking time out for each other seems to get relegated to the back burner. But hopefully, this article will be a reminder of why it is so important!! After you get married, everything is new and exciting—it’s just you and your husband. You strive to be a good wife to your new husband. You try to please him in every way. You take time to listen when he talks. You cuddle with him. You fix his favorite foods. You anticipated his arrival home from work with joy!! You spend every moment possible in his presence just enjoying being married to the “man of your dreams.”
Unfortunately, before you know it, time has a way of dulling that sparkle —we lose that feeling of wonder and excitement. We settle into a new normal routine and then as time goes on, in most homes, one by one, new additions are added to your blossoming family. You and your husband are overjoyed at the blessings God has bestowed on your home. but soon if you aren’t careful, gradually you and your husband grow apart emotionally and before too long, you both begin communicating and enjoying the company of each other less and less each day.
He works all day and comes home tired. He eats supper and kicks back in the recliner. Mama is worn to a frazzle from taking care of kids, cleaning the house, and fixing dinner, then cleaning it up again. After she get supper cleaned up, she has to start on nighttime routines with the kids, giving baths, reading books, tucking them in bed/rocking babies, etc.
By the time, Mama gets all her work done for the day and the kids are finally asleep, she is exhausted and is either very resentful of all her hard work that seems unappreciated or she may be just tired and indifferent to her husband and his need for her attention. So begins a cycle of marital discord that often happens in our homes.
Despite having a huge workload and responsibilities, it is our job as women of God to nurture and care for our husbands. Believe it or not, they need to feel that we genuinely enjoy their company and care about their needs.
Although most of our husbands would never say it out loud, sometimes, they may even resent the responsibilities and duties that have taken their wife’s “undivided attention” away from them. It’s not that they do not love their children. They do!! Our husbands aren’t silly or immature to be feeling this way... They do understand things in a family dynamic often change and become different once babies/children come into a home... but God put something down in a man that only the tender nurturing of his wife can fully bring out of him. God wanted a man to “need” his woman. God designed a woman to be a “helpmeet” to her husband way before He ever initiated her giving birth to their children. Sometimes, our husbands miss the “old us” and they want to feel like they are just as important to us as they once were before we became a Mommy as well as a wife. This is why I believe it is so crucial to reconnect with your husband on a regular basis as a couple... It will build a strong marriage!! One that will last the test of time! One that will withstand the storms of life!! I once heard a man say that you can’t raise good, Godly kids unless you have a good, Godly marriage first! We, as the parents, are modeling for our children what marriage looks like— Yet another reason to make sure we get it right!! They will learn from our example and from what they see out of us.
As tired and a weary as you may feel, dear wife, be intentional and make time for your husband. Care about what he cares about. Ask him about his day. Act interested! Serve him with a cheerful attitude. If he has a hobby, consider joining him in his hobby, if possible. I promise, just by making time for your husband and showing him your special attention will help build up your home...
One wise lady imparted me some wonderful words of wisdom when I was a new mother. She said “Always put your relationship with your husband first, even before your children!” (Now this may sound like strange advice to young moms —you are probably thinking that’s bad advice! — we must take care of our children first! They need us more ! They are helpless and depend on us mamas for their every need! Our husbands are self dependent - they don’t “NEED” us!!)
But before you get too carried away in your protests, let me explain. She wasn’t advocating that I neglect my child to care for my husband. She was reminding me that one day, that child is going to grow up and leave home- as much as we love our kids, it’s just a fact of life. Most kids will leave home between 18-22 years of age on average. The relationship I am building with their Daddy is going to far outlast the time we have them in our home... when the kids are long gone from our nest and they are out building their own homes, all I am going to have to lean on in my older years is the relationship I have built with my spouse.
Other older women have reiterated similar advice to me... they poured their heart and soul into raising their children and both they and their husbands were in unison in parenting those children God blessed them with. When the nest was finally empty, and all the children had taken flight, they looked at each other like near perfect strangers and was like, “Who are you?” Their entire relationship was solely build on the kids alone and once that was taken away, they somewhat struggled to find their footing in their marriage because they didn’t make their relationship together as a couple a big priority for the twenty years prior. Thankfully, they testified that the Lord helped them during that rough patch and now, on the other side of that struggle, they have learned to lean on each other and are daily working to build a stronger relationship and are cautioning other young couples on how to avoid that pitfall by keeping your marriage a priority even before your kids!
I have seen the flip side as well... people who put their children before their spouses. Most the time, it breeds contempt, anger, jealousy, discord and often, it has even led to divorce. That’s why you hear of couples being married for 20-30 years suddenly no longer “compatible” with each other—seeking divorce. They failed to communicate with each other and build up their marriage during those years and once the “common denominator—the children” is gone, there was no foundation left for them to communicate about ...
You have to continually work on a marriage — you must spend time together to cultivate a healthy relationship. You can’t say you love your spouse and never take time out to just “be with them”... it is vital to our home to develop a deep meaningful connection with our spouse!
A 2017 article in the Journal of Marriage and Family described how researchers from the University of Minnesota enrolled and studied 47,000 couples from 2003 to 2010. Their finding? Couples were twice as happy in their life when they spent time together. Of special mention is the research’s finding reported stress levels of both partners dropped significantly and they reported their life as having more meaning when they spent time together. During stressful times in life, it’s important to make time for your partner. Careers, children and unplanned events may distract you but taking time and scheduling time to be together benefits all other areas of your life. Couples can survive floods, children’s schedules, financial worries and demanding careers better when they spend time together. In fact, making time for your spouse is the best way to preserve your emotional health which affects your physical health. —Fox26Houston
A great idea is to avoid losing touch with your spouse is to keep a mental check-list in your mind to help you notice the warning signs that you’re putting your relationship with your spouse on the back burner.
A mental checklist of warnings
* You notice you’re arguing more when you both are together.
* You feel as though you’re the only one that cares and remembers date nights or special moments.
* Work takes on a new meaning and he begins getting his need for connection, joy and fun through work instead of with you. He begins to fill your evening hours with work as well.
* You both begin taking the other spouse for
granted or you become critical of your
spouse (nothing they do can please you). You
may become snarky in your attitude and full
of caustic remarks to fling out in anger.
* When you both do have spare time, you sit
glued to your phone, a book, or some else
instead spending that time with each other!
Spending quality time together is nonnegotiable in a relationship. In order to have a home that is a haven for you both, you must cultivate that relationship. I assure you it is well worth the effort!
I realize there are different seasons of life--there are times you may have huge spaces of time to spend together and there will be times (due to work, obligations, or other things) that you may not have a lot of time to spend together. That is completely normal--it is just the ebb and flow of life.
As an illustration, think of your relationship with your spouse as the gasoline fuel tank on your car. You can fill up a car's tank full of gas and go quite a ways before the tank is on empty and your car begins to run on fumes. Our relationships are similar in the fact that during the less busy seasons of life, we must strive to keep that relationship “fuel tank” full.
When the times in life arise that we aren't able to keep that tank of "quality time" completely as full as we would like to have it, we have prepared in advance and can “ride” for quite a ways before the “fuel” deficiency becomes a problem. During these busy times, we may only be able to grab a quick “1 gallon or 5 gallon” worth of quality time here and there--but our relationship can withstand that busy season of life because we prepared in the good times.
(if that makes sense?)
Quality time is all about how you spend the time that you have together. No matter what you are doing, if you are being attentive and you are focused solely on them, your spouse will feel loved.
It's not always about the amount of time you have to spend together but rather the quality of your interactions that count. With so much going on in life, making time to set aside a few minutes for a meaningful and uninterrupted conversation between you and your spouse can be a wonderful way to show your spouse that you care about them.
Reiterating what I said above, while it is great to have a whole day or a whole week full of quality time to spend with your spouse, in many seasons of life, this just isn’t possible. So it is very important for us to remember we must make every moment count. Even if it seems like those little snatches of time don’t mean much, those special moments will give you both “fuel” when life is draining you.
The main thing is that you take the time to enjoy one another's company and to communicate with them...It may something as simple as sitting on the couch after the kids go to bed and just talking . Remember, it's not about the quantity of time you spend together, but instead, it’s about the quality of time.
The world moves at a tremendously fast speed...It’s far too easy to let the important things in your life slip through the cracks and get lost in the chaos of everyday living. Days can go by without really sitting down and talking with your family, or sharing a deeper connection with your spouse. We must be cautious not to allow those opportunities to slip us by....
A little bit of appreciation and taking time out for your spouse will work wonders in your marriage. You need your husband and in turn, he needs you. It takes you both working together to make a home.
—Tiphanie ❤️