Coffee on Coaster Conversations: Helpful habits to maintain your marriage

 

You hear this memorable advice constantly, “Maintain your marriage.” And, it’s ardently true to sustain an ardent relationship. You need to maintain your marriage or its “motor” will fizzle and fail. 

So, here are some habits that act as motor oil that will keep your marriage thriving and the “spark plugs” sparking. 

Date days/ nights - 

keep dating each other habitually to continually “rev up” your relationship and fully reconnect. 

Nix the excuses:

“We’re always busy.” 

“We don’t have a babysitter.” 

“We are on a budget.” 

It’s imperative to hire a babysitter (if no “village”) in order to dote and dine or just walk and talk while holding hands. If you’re on a budget, go on “home dates”. Flirt and play board games or reminisce your beginnings. In the core of your mind, you and your spouse will start hearing the initial wedding march song and re-bond. 

Date days/ nights initiate intimate thoughts and conversation that originate the “oneness”. 

Openly communicate - 

As the saying goes, “Don’t sweep things under the rug.” And, that “given broom” of advice is also crucial. 

If you and your spouse do not openly communicate and ‘sweep things under the rug’, especially crumby issues, those crumbs will become moldy. Issues will never be truly cleaned, forgiven, and forgotten. 

So, take the “dust pan” of communication out of the corner of the pantry and “clean up” crumbs on a daily basis (if any). If communication darkens under the rug, the relationship becomes estranged and spouses become strangers. 

“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. - Ephesians 4:26

Most importantly, Pray with one another - 

Keep your sights on God, not solely on each other, because you are going to inevitably fail one another. Keep your marriage habitually holy by keeping Christ in the center and hold hands and pray. Look down at each other’s ring fingers that symbolize a circle of unending love. 

Pray without ceasing to keep “re-patenting” your marriage and its God-given design of beautiful duty and complementary unity. 

Cover each other in prayer to keep the enemy’s hand from unraveling the bonded braid - God, wife, and husband. 

Once again, as they say, “Marriage takes work”. So, put down your phone - all of the excuses, and get to work on the marriage “motor”. Tweak the “motor oil” when changes in mileage arise - children, needs…life. Your marriage will run smoothly, beating healthily as one heart. 

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. - Genesis 2:24