For the last 40ish days i have been dropping one tip to help you ‘I do’ better and so now we have a collection of 40 Tips to help married people improve their marriage. For the journey through a more in-depth look at each tip, you can start over here…

But for those of you who have journeyed with me, i thought it might be helpful to have all 40 tips summarised into a line or two each for easy access and so here are the tips we looked at [Also the first tip of each five is a link to the blog post that dives deeper into the next five tips]:

#1 Find things to do together. Find things to do apart.

#2 Find friends to spend time with together. Find friends to spend time with apart.

#3 Counselling saves marriages. And enhances them. It is a sign of strength to seek counselling, not weakness.

#4 Date night. Do them. Regularly. Time for just the two of you. 

#5 Find out what your partner’s love languages are and major in them.

#6 Be quick to deal with issues. Things not dealt with tend to start creating issues internally which will erupt.

#7 Serve one another in love. This is an encouragement to wage a daily war on selfishness.

#8 Make time in your day/week to connect on a real level.

#9 Find little fun things to share that are ‘just yours’. Ha ha, you said ‘do do!’

#10 Discover their favourite things and act on that regularly. Especially if they’re not your favourite things and won’t happen naturally.

#11 Treasure EVERY moment. This was a guest tip by a friend who has recently lost his wife to cancer. You just never know and so making and taking time to appreciate the moments can be huge.

#12 Change your hurtful/annoying behaviour. Don’t say “Sorry!” if you’re not willing to change.

#13 Major on the big issues. Give energy to the small ones.

#14 Stick your hand down a toilet. Or less specifically, make an effort to jump in and do the chores your person really doesn’t dig.

#15 Ask for what you need/want. Don’t make the other person guess.

#16 Communication. Work at it. Don’t assume that you speak and hear and interpret the same way. Work together on figuring out how to communicate well with each other.

#17 Cheerlead your partner. Publicly. Not all the time to the point of ‘Get a room!’ vibes but it is okay from time to time for the general public to know you dig this person. 

#18 Stop with the marriage jokes/negative statements. The more we hear the little lies and half-truths, the more our minds start to believe.

#19 Create your own traditions. Find fun things to do that are particularly you.

#20 Don’t tell all of the truth. Or maybe don’t tell it all to your person. There are some struggles and temptations that might be better held with a good friend of the same gender who can hold you accountable that will only hurt your spouse if you keep sharing them.

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Okay, we are halfway through. Breathe. Stand up. Stretch. It’s easy to just zone off and stop focusing on what you’re reading. So maybe take a moment to scan through the top 20 and let me know in the comments which one felt most helpful to you. And then come back and read the rest of the list. Was there one that particularly stood out or was something new you felt you need to focus on? Please let me know. And breathe again. And continue…

#21 Tend towards the cleaner one. There is a strong likelihood that you will have different understandings of clean and it’s up to the messier one to make the most movement, for sanity sake.

#22 Don’t keep scorecards. Of chores done, of mistakes made, of things not done. Go back and read ‘serve each other in love’ and focus on that.

#23 Quit with all this ‘Best wife/husband in the world’ nonsense. It’s not true, so rather say something true.

#24 Wife/Husband first. Family second. [And i’ve been told Spouse first, Children second, Family third]

#25 Put down the screen. And just be. Don’t be that couple in that restuarant not looking at each other the whole entire time.

#26 Rage, Rage against the selfishness of the ‘me’. This was mentioned with ‘serve one another in love’ but it’s such a beast it is worth focusing on at least twice.

#27 Debrief and dream. An end of year tradition Val and i have which has had amazing effect for us every year.

#28 Some things need to be dealt with. Some things can be let go of. Sometimes you will mistake the second for the first. Work on that.

#29 Be interested in stuff you are not interested in. Something [not all things] can be interesting simply because your person enjoys it. 

#30 Find/make time to have fun/be silly/play together. 

#31 Walk. Another suggestion of one thing Val and i have done a lot of despite not being particularly avid walkers and it’s been more about the time spent intentionally together.

#32 Listen to really hear. Not to find a space for your response.

#33 Have fun nicknames for each other. Again, not an absolute, but a nice cherry on the top or in my case, chocolate whisper. 

#34 Never ever ever ever ever ever diss your spouse on social media (or live). Yeah, just don’t. 

#35 Put effort into their family. You didn’t choose them, but there is a big chance they are going to be around.

#36 Fight well. Not fighting is not necessarily the sign of a good marriage. But fighting badly is the sign of one that needs a lot of work. 

#37 Be kind to single people. Marriage is NOT the Oscar-award-winning feat people would have you imagine it is. But also be mindful of those who were in your life before and also after.

#38 Game well together.

#39 Find moments to spoil each other. Think out of the box and realise most of these do not need to cost money.

#40 Rinse and repeat. This is not a once-around-the-track kind of event. It’s a for-the-rest-of-your-life journey and so keep returning to #1 and starting this thing again. And add your own tips. And have conversations with married friends. And single friends who observe your marriage. Invite the village to help raise this couple. It can be hard enough to try and do by yourselves.

And there we go. But before you leave please scan over the last 20 and give me an indication of one of the tips that felt particularly helpful or even maybe something you had never considered before.

If you want to now go back through them in their slightly longer forms you can click the link over here. Also, if you found them helpful, please do share them on social media. And if you think it would be good for me to keep creating content like this and would like to get involved in helping make that happen, you can check out my Patreon page : a way for those who value the work i do to help me have the resources to continue doing it.

What tip would YOU add to this list? Let that be the 3rd thing you drop in the comments below. Thanks for reading and may your marriage continue to grow and live and breathe and be celebrated.

 

Be quick to deal with issues.