Ten tips for a successful marriage.

I don’t know about the rest of the world but at this point I have had just about enough winter to last until next November.  We spent the weekend snowed in here and while my husband initially laughed at my desire to stock up on groceries and plan to have no plans, he acquiesced around Saturday morning that the roads really were bad and it was best for us to stay put.  Despite it being very cold and snowy and being housebound with a toddler I had a lovely two days with my family, and the main reason was because we were all together.  Since my husband works A LOT, having time together feels like quite a luxury and I enjoyed every moment of our family time and couple time.

By the time Monday morning rolled around I realized that I am incredibly blessed.  I know not everyone is so lucky to have a partner in their life, someone to rely upon, someone to confide in, someone to love.  And so I wanted to write a quick note of appreciation to my husband for being amazing.  He does the chores I hate.  He cooks me dinner when he can.  He does bath time.  He tells me every day that I am beautiful and that he loves me.  I couldn’t imagine my life without him and I know that I am a better person for having him around.  That being said, “perfect” relationships don’t grow on trees.  So while I have been reflecting on my incredible luck I have also been thinking about all the ways in which we work on making it work every day.  So here are some tips from me on relationships.  I don’t claim to be an expert but I do have a degree in Psychology and am currently in possession of an amazing marriage. So, for whatever that is worth, here goes.

1.  DON’T KEEP SCORE.

Somewhere in our young lives many of us were raised to believe in the idea that relationships should be even, that there should be an equitable division of labor.  Well, I have a newsflash that may sound both obvious and shocking at the same time.  Life is not fair AND we should stop trying to make it that way.  Things are not going to be even.  You will not be equal in everything in your relationship and that is ok.  Sometimes one person will do more things in the house, or will spend more time with the kids, or will be the one who usually picks the restaurant for date night.  Now this may sound like I am advocating for a 1950s style marriage, but that is not at all what I mean here.  What I am saying is that it ultimately doesn’t matter if you have “a traditional” marriage or a more “modern” marriage.  What matters is that both parties are happy with the roles they are playing in the family. If you look at any relationship you are likely to find one partner who is a bit more dominant, one who is more flexible, and one who is more domestic.  Being happy and having a good marriage does not mean that you divide the chores up evenly and you alternate who chooses the movies every Saturday night.  The goal should not be to have a relationship that is perfectly balanced, the goal is to find a balance that works for both of you.  One that is manageable and leaves both people feeling satisfied.  Don’t expect things to be even and don’t complain when they aren’t.  If something doesn’t work for you then address why that is and move on.

2.  BE GRACIOUS WITH EACH OTHER.

In being gracious what I really mean is applying a combination of the serenity prayer and the golden rule to your relationship.  In any relationship there are problems, things that could be better.  The trick is to identify what “problems”  are important and which ones are not really that big of a deal. Early on in my marriage I found myself feeling really frustrated all the time and thinking that my husband didn’t listen to me and that he did not care about my opinions or was selfish.  Because he would continue to do things that I didn’t like even after I told him that I wanted him to change his behavior.  They were little things (keeping his shoes on in the house and getting the floor dirty, leaving dirty dishes on the counter instead of putting them in the dishwasher) but in my mind I had made them into a symbol of how much he loved me.  If he really cared, I would think, he would remember to do this, he would change.  But then after a few months I took a step back and realized I was the one being ridiculous.  Because seriously, was I going to throw my marriage away over dirty dishes?  Of course not, but continuing to harbor resentment over it would have surely poisoned our relationship over time.  When I saw this was happening I had an epiphany that went something like this:  We are all annoying and flawed.  We all make mistakes. Sure I can make a list of things that I would like to change about my husband but I am sure there are things that I do that bug him too.  Truly loving someone means accepting their imperfections.  So unless I am willing to listen to all of the many ways in which I could be more considerate every day, what is the point in badgering my husband over dirty dishes.  I’m not talking about major problems like domestic violence or infidelity or addictions or other very real issues that can destroy relationships, but the little every day things that get under your skin.  You need to let it go, save the energy for the big things.  And treat each other with love and kindness because we all make mistakes and we all fail sometimes.

3. TURN UP THE HEAT.

Your spouse/partner is not just your best friend, your roommate, or your co-parent.  While the intensity of sexual attraction may start to fade over time that doesn’t mean that marriages should become asexual.  No one should aspire to become that joke of a married couple who only has sex on their anniversary.  Studies show that couples that have sex at least once a week are happier and more connected.  I know it can be hard sometimes, you work long hours, you have kids, financial stress, we all have many reasons why we may feel too tired to be intimate.  There may be times when you feel like you are just going through the motions, but that’s ok.  Touch each other. Kiss. Be physically intimate. Sex should not be an afterthought, it needs to be a regular part of your life.  Not every time is going to be amazingly passionate, but taking the time to reconnect physically on a regular basis will keep your relationship going and lay the groundwork necessary for those truly earthshaking/head board breaking encounters too.

4. SPEND TIME TOGETHER.

Do things.  Go to a museum or for a walk or to a concert or a sporting event.  Talk about movies and music and politics and religion.  Explore the world and explore each other.  In this world of smart phones and wifi we can all fall into the trap of spending more time in our virtual or digital life than engaging in our real life.  Don’t let your time together devolve into just sharing the same space, make sure that you are really present and you are experiencing the world together.  And maybe try something new every once in awhile.  Couples who make a habit out of doing something new together tend to be happier than those whose lives are more predictable.

5. SPEND TIME APART.

This one is hard for me at times, but it is really important to have your own individual lives in addition to your family life.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder as the saying goes.  While I don’t advocate amping up your alone time too much, I think it is important to have your own stuff. A few hobbies, some separate friends, your work, whatever.  The important thing is to go out and do your own thing and then come back and share your experience with your partner.  Having some time apart or some things that are just yours keeps an element of mystery going in the relationship and allows you to not get too sick of each other.  We all need space every once in awhile.  And it gives you something real to talk about, other than just the normal rehashing of your daily routine.

6. BE HONEST.

This is a big one for me.  I believe that there is very little that is more important in a relationship than honesty.  Any aspect of your life that you do not feel comfortable sharing with your spouse or partner is a potential time bomb that will tear the fabric of your relationship apart.  Now I’m not saying you have to share every minute detail of your daily existence, but if there is something that you are purposefully keeping from your significant other that is a big problem.  Without trust you can never have a truly wonderful relationship.

7. OWN YOUR ISSUES.

Just because you are feeling insecure about your job, your weight, your parenting, what-have-you, please don’t assume that your partner is judging you.  In my experience I judge myself way more harshly than anyone else and when I am feeling insecure I am also much more prone to imagining that my husband is thinking negative thoughts about me.  If you think someone is upset or disinterested or whatever, the right way to handle it in a relationship is to ask them about it, politely and calmly.  No one is a mind-reader here so assuming that you know what your partner is thinking is going to lead you down a path of misunderstandings and hurt feelings.  Your mind is only capable of truly knowing your own thoughts, and that is if you are lucky.  When things are unsaid or murky, the best thing to do is try and gain actual clarity or live with the uncertainty and move on.

8. DON’T FORGET THE LITTLE THINGS.

Little every day acts of kindness matter so much in a relationship.  Kiss each other goodbye.  Send ‘I love you’ texts during the day.  Make each others’ favorite meal.  Buy the kind of juice that he/she likes.  Do that chore that your partner hates for them.  And say please and thank you.  In my opinion it is impossible to say ‘I love you’ or ‘Thank you’ enough in a relationship.  Give love and gratitude out and 9 times out of 10 you will get it back.

9.  ACCEPT THAT THERE WILL BE BAD TIMES.

Life is full of ups and downs and so are relationships.  It is inevitable that you will hurt each others’ feelings.  You will argue about things. And there will be weeks or months when you are upset or just feel like the spark is dwindling.  It’s ok.  One bad day does not mean that your relationship is terrible.  We all have times when we are struggling and the important thing is that you try to meet adversity as a team.  Sometimes you may disagree and sometimes you will lose your battles.  But being there in the good and the bad is what it is all about.  Ride it out and so long as you remember to keep treating each other with grace and kindness and try to see your partner as a helper rather than an enemy you will likely emerge stronger and more in love when you get to the next period of peace.

10.  BELIEVE IN EACH OTHER.

We are all growing and evolving and trying to be better or get somewhere new.  If you are going to survive the journey together as a couple you need to believe in one another and support each others’ dreams and goals.  The right partner will challenge you to be the best version of yourself and not try to sculpt you into a mediocre version of someone else. The right partner should lift you up and try to make things easier.  The right partner will celebrate your successes and rally around you during times of failure.  If you can do this for each other your relationship will be able to weather almost any storm.

Lessons my mother taught me

Like many people, I made some New Year’s resolutions, four to be exact.  I resolved that this year I would  bolster my fitness by completing a 5Kto10K training program,  improve my health by drinking 3 green smoothies/week, and improve upon myself globally by committing to stop biting my nails and trying to read 50 books.  Well, we aren’t even out of January yet and I am already having trouble with my resolutions.  In fact the first week back from vacation I had to really drag myself to the gym, I had zero desire to move at all, let alone run.  As I was driving there I started to negotiate with myself – maybe I would just sit in the sauna for awhile, or I could use the bikes instead of the treadmill.  No!  I argued on – beauty is pain.

The thought flew out into my inner dialogue before I could censor it and then I winced.  Beauty is pain.  This is something I have said to myself so many times that I could not begin to count it.  And suddenly in my car, thinking about my toddler at home and the many legitimate reasons I had for wanting to run that day the words echoed in my mind.  And I thought about how incredibly messed up that idea is.  Because when you think about it, there is very little about beauty that should in any way be related to pain.

Yes, yes of course you can argue that the root of a saying like “beauty is pain” is that you need to work hard and sometimes suffer for things that are worthwhile.  That is an idea that I am wholeheartedly in agreement about.  Most things in life that are worth having come with some kind of struggle and “pain” behind them.  BUT  thinking back to my own childhood I knew that this phrase was used as a way of insidiously teaching me things about myself and my place in the world.  Beauty is pain – it was said when I complained about hair brushing being too painful (translation: I do these things for your own good so you should stop complaining about it).  Beauty is pain – it was said when I didn’t want to sleep on curlers the night before school pictures (translation: your natural state is not good enough,we need to improve upon it).  Beauty is pain- it was said when shoes pinched my toes or clothes were restrictive or when I was cold in the winter going to church in a skirt and tights instead of pants (translation:  Nothing is more important than the image you present to the world, especially not your own comfort level).

I thought about all the things I wanted to teach my daughter.  How to be strong, to have patience,  to be gracious, to be confident in herself, to be kind, and a million other things. But the idea that beauty and pain are linked is certainly not one of them.  However, if I am completely honest about my own motivation for working out and eating better, my daughter definitely comes into play.  I do it for myself, because I want to be healthier and to look better.  But I also do it because I want my daughter to grow up in a family that values nutrition and health, I want her to be healthy, I want to be a healthy role model for her.  And sometimes in the darkest, secret corners of my thoughts I know I do it because I want her to be thin.  And beautiful.  And I hate this about myself.

I have debated writing about this topic for a week now and then I saw this blog online and felt like it was time, both time to write in general and time to unload a bit about this topic.

For those who don’t want to read the blog or can’t access it the author of the piece analyzed search terms and found that people are much more likely to google things like “is my son gifted” and “is my daughter fat” rather than the opposite even though in reality girls are much more likely to be gifted and boys more likely to be overweight.  I have been thinking about this today and I have come to begrugdingly realize that I have a mixed reaction to these findings.

First I find myself feeling sad that this would be true – if it is true – that parents are more interested in their sons’ intelligence and in their daughters’ appearance.  Second, I find myself skeptical that you can really know this from search engines – do our questions online really fully mirror our thoughts?  Third, I know that my own thoughts and questions about my daughter are far more complicated than just is she smart vs. is she thin.

I will admit that I do wonder more about my daughter’s growth than her intelligence.  She is very very tall for her age and I have often wondered when that will change, if it will, or if she will wind up 6′ tall, which would place her far far taller than any other female in my family.  As far as intelligence, well I don’t know if I have really ever googled whether my daughter is gifted because I know she is smart.  People tell me all the time that she is very smart. And not to be overly boastful, but the reality is that her dad and I are both far above average in our intelligence and so I was never that worried that our child would be any different. Whether she is above average or a genius will become apparent in time, I guess, but it’s not something I lose sleep about.  She is herself. She loves to learn and I know if I get out of her way she will continue to develop at her own pace.

Weight and beauty are another issue. Every adult in my family (except for me) is obese. While I have never had the problems that my sister, mother, father, aunts, etc. have  I have struggled with my weight since puberty.  At the age of 13 I blossomed from a tall and very thin child into a woman with an hourglass figure.  I that my husband loves my curves and many would kill to have my body type, but  it means that my natural setpoint is at the very high end of what would be considered healthy for my height.  And I love food.  And I was never encouraged to do anything even remotely athletic as a child.  So I am constantly terrified of being fat.  And feel like I am fighting an uphill battle against my metabolism.

I will admit that I worry about my daughter’s weight just as I take pride her being cute – in the fact that her dimples make people stop and smile and comment on her on a daily basis.  Pretty people have an easier life. They are viewed more positively across the board.  And really, what mother doesn’t think her child is beautiful.  Some of the same thoughts come into play about weight. Whether we like it or not, society judges fat people harshly and women I think get judged more negatively than men.  And I want my baby girl to have a wonderful life.  I want her to be loved, popular, successful and happy.

 

Being a parent is this crazy rollercoaster of control  On the one hand my daughter’s independent and wild spirit are a daily example of how I am very much not in control of everything in this world.  But yet there is a part of me that has whispered (and sometimes shouted) since the first time I ever saw her face YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE.  You are responsible for this person. If she is hurt – you are responsible.  If she is sick – you are responsible.  If she grows up to be a jerk – you are responsible.  And ever since I was pregnant there was a big part of me that said if she grows up to be overweight – you are responsible.

But more than I want my daughter to be healthy and happy and “thin”, which in our society these days really means a healthy BMI, more than any of that I don’t want her to have my issues. I don’t want her to spend her 20s counting the calories in everything she eats.  I don’t want her to have a brush with bulimia.  I don’t want her to look in the mirror and hate her body.  And I think what terrifies me more than anything is that I don’t know if I know how to raise a girl in America who loves her body.  Who is confident in her inner and outer beauty, but knows that she is so much more than her appearance.  And I am doubly terrified to know that even if I did figure out how to do it, someone else in this world would probably mess her up anyway, that the messages would seep in somehow regardless.  That she will learn to value herself based on whether others think she is beautiful.  That she will doubt her own glorious radiance.  That she will someday think she is not enough.    Thinking about all of this terrifies me sometimes but for now I know she is the embodiment of beauty and energy and light and love.  And I know that if nothing else I will find a way to teach her that even though we do need to brush her hair every day, beauty does NOT mean pain and being pretty is NOT more important than being comfortable in her own skin and having fun.