Marriage is unlike any other relationship you’ll ever have. At its best, it’s a relationship founded on unconditional love, trust, commitment, care, support, and encouragement. Simply put, we promise to be there for each other. We need each other.
The joy of this give and take can get diluted, though, by the speed and demands of life. Sometimes your spouse just needs to be reminded that you’re thinking of her—that there is an intentional thought behind your actions other than just obligation.
It’s really quite astounding that most of our greatest roles in life don’t come with an instruction manual. You have to pass a test to get a driver’s license yet there’s no manual or test required to be a husband or a dad.
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I’m not in favor of requiring legislation for such—but, man, it would sure be nice to have more of a leg-up than most of us guys get.
Kirby and I have been married 36 years so far. That’s a long time for anything—and it’s longer than the average marriage lasts today. Quantity certainly counts for something but quality is even more important.
Courtesy Corey Lack
After years of ups and downs, happy times and sad times, I can truly say that being together with my husband the past 36 years has been well worth it all. Not every minute was fun, close, or romantic, but the sharing of life together for the long haul has produced a greater closeness than I ever imagined.
Years ago I bought the book, 1001 Ways To Be Romantic. It was helpful for the season—got me to think intentionally and creatively about keeping the romance alive amidst many little kids running around.
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But honestly, over the years I haven’t found anything that keeps the romance alive better than simple signs of affection throughout the day. It’s the easiest, most effective, and least expensive way to keep the romantic fires stoked for busy parents.
It’s natural for guys to be the tough guy—to spar, compete, trash-talk, flex their muscles, yell, thump their chests. Get a few grown men together and they soon regress to grade-school boys—silly, crude, loud, and pranking one another. Analyze it all you want but it is what it is.
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One characteristic obviously missing among those awesome qualities and behaviors is tenderness. We don’t naturally understand it. It confuses us. Guys spend their first couple of decades thinking that manly men are rough and tough.
For decades now, I’ve regularly heard about the importance of quality time. It’s usually in the context of parenting. “I don’t get to have as much time with my child as I’d like, but I make sure we have a few minutes of quality time regularly.”
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I’m not looking to pick a fight, but I don’t buy that. I believe saying that is simply an attempt to alleviate the guilt we feel in not making enough time for those we love. It’s rationalization, even though we may genuinely believe it.
There’s no place like home. As the provider for our family, I’ve always looked forward to returning home at the end of the work day. My retreat. My haven. My safe zone. No matter what happens during the day, I know I have a loving and supportive family waiting for me on the homefront.
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But I haven’t always protected that retreat. There have been many times I’ve allowed my negative emotions and preoccupations from the day to taint my home.
My husband and I usually travel together. Ever since we married over thirty-six years ago, we’ve found it difficult to be apart for very long. We realized that very early on when I went to visit my parents out of state—he showed up just a couple days later because he missed me! That wasn’t the last time that happened. So we try to plan accordingly now.
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Recently, he took a 5-day trip to see his extended family. It was a long awaited trip that had been put off for months due to some seasonal imbalance in our lives. Unfortunately, the seasonal imbalance was still in my life due to caring for my mom, so I wasn’t able to travel with him this time.
The Crazy Cycle. That’s what Emerson Eggerichs calls it in his book, Love & Respect. Any married couple will readily identify it once they read the description. A conversation that goes nuclear almost before you even know what just happened. He says something that sounds unloving. She zings back with something that sounds disrespectful. Or perhaps she starts it—doesn’t matter. It quickly devolves into another crazy cycle.
Some arguments catch couples by surprise. They stumble into it and don’t recognize it until emotions are ignited. Yet other arguments can be predicted a mile away. The subject matter has been trouble in the past—perhaps many times—and unless you approach it differently, it will be trouble again.
The other day I was talking to a friend and mentioning that my husband and I went through a very rough patch in our marriage around years 14-18. When she asked why that was, I had to really think for a minute. It should not have been that difficult. This was one of the most pivotal points in our marriage and it had to do with—not surprisingly—respect.
Photo by Corey Lack
I had a wonderful husband, but I didn’t always give him the credit he deserved. His schedule at work was quite busy, and he wasn’t at home as much as I would have liked. This meant I was carrying the load of our five children, homeschooling, and everything else on the home front—many things that I felt shouldn’t be my sole responsibility. He was the breadwinner of the family, but not much else in my eyes.
