3 Simple but Surprising Ways to Grow Your Marriage
Everywhere we look online, we see hacks:
21 hacks to make the most of your morning.
15 hacks to raise great kids.
7 fruit and veggie hacks that will make you love your kitchen.
You get the picture.
Over the next two posts I want to offer you a few marriage hacks I learned from friends, read in books, or recently applied in my own life. My hope is to give you seven simple ways to grow your marriage.
The first three hacks (in today’s post) are simple, but unique. In Part 2 I’ll offer four automated hacks. I’ll explain what I mean by automated in Part 2.
1. Shower together and talk about Jesus.
Most couples I know struggle to find the time to talk about what they’re learning spiritually. They might have a quiet time in the morning, but then kids wake up, lunch bags need to be packed, and the commute to work begins.
Some friends recently shared with me a unique way to discuss what they’re learning spiritually. They have quiet times in the morning where they read the bible and pray on an individual basis. After their quiet times, they then shower together and talk about what they learned.
I love this idea! Great motivation for sharing what you’re learning in the Word!
2. On your next anniversary, schedule a day date instead of a date night.
Block your calendars now and look for some fun, unique ways to celebrate your anniversary. I wrote a full post on date days a few weeks ago so you can read more on that post. In a nutshell, date days give you more flexibility than date nights and I believe might be one of the best ways for you to use one of your vacation days. Kristen and I plan to celebrate our 17th anniversary with a date day. I already have some great ideas.
Bonus Anniversary Hack: Some friends of mine don’t celebrate their anniversary on an annual basis. Instead they celebrate it monthly! They say (and I agree) that marriage is such a big deal that it deserves a celebration more than just once per year. They’ve been married over 37 years and just celebrated their 452nd month of marriage as a couple.
3. Have a code word to help de-escalate an argument.
I read about this in a book called An American Marriage: A Novel. In the book one of the main characters says, "If either of us says ‘November 17,’ the anniversary of our first date, then all conversation must cease for fifteen minutes. I pulled the trigger because I knew that if she said one more word about my mama, one of us would say something that we couldn’t come back from."
Sometimes couples get into arguments and the conversation continues to escalate and get more frustrating. In this fictional book author Tayari Jones suggests having a word in your marriage you use to help calm things down. When we teach marital communication and conflict resolution we talk about calling a “time out.”
This code word idea helps you find an agreed upon way to call a time out.
I intentionally kept this post short, but I hope these three hacks give you some ideas you can apply to your marriage. The possibilities are endless! What are some simple but surprising and unique hacks you can apply to your own marriage?
Click here to read Part 2 in this series.
Your Turn:
What’s one hack from the list above you could apply in your marriage? I’m leaning towards applying #1 from the list above!
What’s a simple, unique marriage hack you recommend to others?
Photo by Sebastian Pichler on Unsplash