3 Sure-Fire Ways to Build a Successful Marriage

3 Sure-Fire Ways to Build a Successful Marriage

How did we make it? How have we survived 16 years and still going strong? It hasn’t been easy. It’s taken a lot of work over a lot of time. But it’s not rocket science. It really never is. We’ve learned that it’s as simple as making a few things top priority.

1. Serve one another. 

If I wrote a book on making marriage I would center it around serving one another. In fact, very soon we’re opening up an entire marriage course on this very subject! This is the most obvious means to keeping your marriage healthy and at the same time, the most overlooked and underused. Several years ago I had an ‘ah-ha’ moment. In the middle of a really bad stretch for us, God spoke to my heart and simply said, “Serve her just like you serve others.” For some reason, we can be so good at serving people we don’t sleep next to but terrible at serving the one we do.

Why? It’s simple—serving others is a choice. And when I chose to serve my wife and actually put her needs above my own, there is peace between us and in our home. She echoed the same back to me. Fellas—it’s easier for your wife to want to serve your needs when you’re serving hers. Trust me.

2. Let love grow. 

I’m not a believer in love at first sight. I never have been. Even when I was in high school and gushing over Richard Marx power ballads (it’s true, I admit it. Mancard will be surrendered shortly). I think infatuation at first sight is real, but love at first sight? Nope. The reason? Love is a process that grows over time. The moment you see “the one” for the first time, it’s impossible to have weathered storms like changing diapers, feeding a new born baby every hour together, holding their hair while they hug a toilet and vomit, standing at a funeral and saying goodbye to a loved one together, figuring out how the bills are going to get paid, and living with each other’s idiosyncrasies. These are all things that happen over three, five, 10, and 20 years or more. Through it all, love grows.  

Love is more than just a feeling.

 

It’s a deep-rooted commitment that holds strong through really great times and really hard times. I look at our life over the past decade, and I see how our love has grown. I love my wife more today than I did when I first married her. How we feel about each other today is far beyond how we felt about each other when we first met. It’s taken a mixture of really difficult and really celebratory times for that to happen.

3. Celebrate Success AND Failure. 

Sounds strange doesn’t it? Why would I celebrate failures? Here’s why—our failures, like successes, build character and they bind our hearts closer together. This is true for any area of your life but especially marriage. The truth is, you might have more failures than success. That’s just the way life is. In marriage, figuring out how to move on through failure is tough, but it makes you stronger together.

I could use thousands of words telling story after story of friends and colleagues who’ve walked through the most devastating failures with their spouse and lived to tell about it. Almost all of them would echo that it’s turned them into a better person and developed more character than they ever knew was possible. Learn to celebrate both success and failure.

Truth is, marriage was never created to be easy. God never said getting married would make life easy. He just said we can get married. That’s why grace exists. Grace covers a multitude of sins and it sustains marriage through the strongest hurricane.

I had to laugh a while back when a friend of mine told me that in a recent fight he was having with his wife, she blurted out, “If only our marriage was like Mike & Kristin’s. I bet they don’t fight like this!” Obviously this was an assumption based on what she did not know about our marriage, or our relationship. We can fight with the best of ’em! We are far from perfect, but we are committed to never giving up. Maybe that’s where you need to start?

written by Mike Berry

#its_all_about_relationship

#oluthomas

#oluthomas_sharing_the_love

https://m.facebook.com/oluthomasshare 

 

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I Hate How Much I Love You

I Hate How Much I Love You: A Letter to the Girl I Both Love and Hate

I hate how cold you can be, but I still want you.

I hate how cold you are to me, but in those brief moments when you warm up to me and show me the real you, I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. Your smile makes me feel alive.

I hate when you won’t talk to me. Sure, you say words, but the conversations are shallow. It feels like I’m speaking to your shadow — not your real self. I just want to get to know you on a deeper level, and I hate that you won’t let me.

Because I know that, deep down inside, there’s love. There’s a big, caring heart and an incredibly beautiful soul.

I hate how you distance yourself, but that only makes me want to bring you in closer.

I understand your need your space. Everyone does. But the only way for us to build a lasting relationship together is for us to actually be together. And I don’t mean just in the same room. I’m talking about on the same wavelength.

I want us to become one and the same. I want a partnership, a unit, a love. I’m not sure if you’re scared or just not ready (which I understand), but I need you to know how much I want and need this.

There is no doubt in my mind that one day we will be all I know we can be. I just wish that day would come a lot sooner.

I hate that you don’t trust me, but I want you to open up to me.

I’m trustworthy, but you don’t seem to believe it.

I know you’re not to blame, though. You’ve had it rough for quite some time now. You’ve suffered from failed relationships, heartbreak and abandonment by your friends. I’m incredibly sorry for that.

I know I may have made some mistakes in the past, but I love you. I’m here for you and will always be here for you. Trust me. Or must I pay for others’ sins?

You’re someone I will never fully let go of; you are a part of me. You influenced me in a way that no one else will ever influence me again. And the path I’m on is largely due to having met and loved you. I couldn’t leave you if I wanted to.

I hate that you don’t care about me the way I wish you did, but I know one day you could.

It hurts. When I look at you or talk to you, I can tell you don’t care about me the way I care about you.

And though it hurts unlike any pain I’ve endured before, it’s okay. I understand you don’t love me.

But you could. And if there is an order to this world — one in which love wins in the end — then you will love me, eventually. It just wouldn’t make sense that someone who loves someone as deeply as I love you wouldn’t receive that love in return. It just can’t be.

I don’t love you like I’ve loved anyone else before; I love you the way someone is supposed to love someone.

I hate how much I love you.

It breaks my heart how much I love you. It hurts to love you. If I just loved you a little less — just a little — then I’d be able to move on and let go. I know that’s probably what I ought to do, but I don’t know how.

How does one let go of someone who has become a part of them? Tell me where to cut the cord, and I will.

I hate myself for loving you, because I know I deserve better than this. I know I deserve the love I’m giving you.

Why can’t you be that person to me?

Why can’t you let me love you?

If you won’t let me love you, at least let me hate you completely.

I can’t go on loving and hating you at the same time. The tension inside me is building, and I’m feeling like I’m about to implode.

But I know this will one day all work itself out. You will either love me, or I’ll find a way to survive without you. It won’t be easy. I’m not even sure it’s possible to ever completely let go of you, but I have to try.

I won’t let you be the end of me, because there’s a life out there waiting for me to live it. Just know that this could have been beautiful. We could have been beautiful together.

And it wasn’t me who ruined it. But there is hope... you could make it better ‘cos I still love you, though it’s killing me!

By Paul Hudson

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If you want to love and be loved, you’ve got to show up naked

If you want to love and be loved, you’ve got to show up naked.

I’ve struggled
Fought myself
Wondering
Whether to say it or leave it
To swallow or sing
Yet to be true
I’m willing to disappoint you
Scare you
Lose you
My ear hoping, aching for
I love you

I’ve always believed
Better to say it all
Better to say
All the rights and all the wrongs
Cross fear’s line
Spill my darkness
Uncloak my secrets
Parade my demons
Not viciously deny
But own them
Rob their crowns
Topple their thrones

Then maybe you’ll understand
Let fall held doubt
Dismiss reasoning’s shield
Lower anger’s bitter sword
Choose kindness and mercy
Shew difference’s chasm
Pull me closer
But not into your shadow

I’ll do the same for you
Over and over and over
Just let me see you
All of you
Because then I’ll trust you
And we’ll be free of fear’s chains
And our demon’s refrains
And I will say
I love you
I love you
I love you

And it will be true.

Originally published on cabotocallaghan.com.

 





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Before You Present or Sign Those Divorce Papers... Please read This!

I’m a Single Parent, and It’s Breaking My Heart

 

Divorce was never something I particularly wanted. And even now I’d be lying to your cyber face if I told you that I’m okay with it. Because I’m not. I’m not okay with it. Not with any of it really. I am a single father now, and I’m having a lot of trouble adjusting to that. I want to fall asleep to the old days.

So many nights come and go and all I want is to lay there in that bed again and laugh with the kids’ mom about how funny 4-year-old Henry was today at the park. I want us to relive how brilliant our 6-year-old Violet appears to us when she stands in the kitchen and tells us one of her beautiful stories. Together, I dream of us watching Charlie, our little man of just a year and a half, as he wanders around the early morning kitchen, pulling stuff off the shelves and wreaking sweet glorious havoc down all over our coffee time.

But those days are gone.

And so what I’m left with, what we’re all left with, man/woman/and children, is this storybook that still exists, but only in torn up pages tossed carelessly around the room.

Parts of me think that I ought to just get on with it. With all this #divorce happening these days, why would anyone ever listen to the way I feel and give a damn? They’d probably think I’m #weak or maybe too #romantic or something.

“Get on with your life now,” a lot of people would tell me. 

“What’s done is done, dude.”

It isn’t done for me though.

 I don’t care what anyone says, it simply isn’t done.

I was born once long ago when my mom brought me into this world. Then I was born three more times when I watched my kids be born themselves. So don’t tell me to just move on. Some people find it easy to forget all about something as epic as all those real and wonderful dreams that come along with the birth of your babies. Some people can move right past the idea that this was going to be a family forever.

Then other people, people like me, I guess, we can’t do that at all.

So before you present or sign those divorce papers, think on what you desire: Did you want your family to last or give up on those memories?

Originally appeared at Babble By Serge Bielanko

#its_all_about_relationship

#oluthomas 

 



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