I like to focus a lot on recipes, fitness, and all aspects of parenting, but something I don’t get to talk about as often is marriage.
Marriage is so important and it has an effect on your parenting and especially on your children. I figured it was fitting to do a marriage post since my husband and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary a little over a month ago. 🙂
I value my marriage so much and Mac and I are intentional about making our marriage happy, fun, and an example for our children. Our boys will grow up seeing how we treat one another, how we love one another, and how we manage conflict.
We are constantly being watched. Besides actually wanting to enjoy our marriage, that is a pretty big motivator to communicate effectively and give our best to one another in our marriage.
I am not an expert on marriage (and I don’t think that time or age will make you one, either) but I love learning about marriages and families across the lifespan and how they are different between cultures and countries. Something that I am blessed to have is my Certification with the NCFR that allows me to be a Family Life Educator (as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Human Development & Family Studies AND Psychology). Being a CFLE, I have been able to teach in a few different settings, but the one I have yet to teach in is a marriage setting. After studying some things and talking to a few educators, I have been putting together a marriage workshop called “Marriage Matters”.
I am SO passionate about this because marriage DOES matter – in SO many aspects of your life. I am not saying that everyone should be married or get married, because it may not be for some people, but marriage does matter and it can have a tremendous effect, positive or negative, on a life.
Once I finish the curriculum for the workshop, I would love to share some of it with you!
The workshop will go over:
- Communication
- Intimacy Exercises
- Stages of Marriage
- Expressing and Fulfilling Needs
- Principles for Making Marriage Work (from the work of John Gottman)
As always, especially when dealing with relationships, things should be STRENGTHS based. When you focus on weaknesses all the time, what do you think you are going to see when you look at your relationship from taking a step back? You will see weaknesses. When you focus on strengths, you will see strengths. A lot of the time, when you are putting your energy into your strengths, your weaknesses will rise unknowingly.
Well enough about that!
I lastly want to mention something about my marriage. I LOVE my marriage and my husband and I are so happy. Sometimes we sit and talk about how awesome we are (no, really). Not in a bragging way, but in a way that we are just so happy where we are and that even after 4 years of marriage and 11 years of being in a relationship, every day feels like a fairy tale. I can’t believe how much our love has changed over the last 4 years and I know that if we continually learn about each other and our marriage, that our relationship will only continue to grow.
May is a busy month for us – Mother’s Day, our wedding anniversary, and my birthday. So, last month my husband dubbed it – “The Wonderful Month of May” and from day 1 until day 31, he outdid himself in making me feel loved, appreciated, and needed.
He brought me home a flower every day that month (+ a dozen roses on our anniversary), sent me encouragements every week, and we slow danced in our living room once for every special day that month.
Also, he kept me guessing by having 31 blank lines on our whiteboard that he filled in a word every day until the end of the month when it was full and it revealed a beautiful vow to me.
So, yes, this post is about DOING something intentional to make your spouse happy (without expecting anything in return) AND to brag about how amazing my hubby is too!
And then a few from the best day ever – four years ago!
Remember:
