Lockdown has been brutal for some marriages. i think it has been surprisingly good for ours on the other hand. Val and i are two people with very strong personalities and so to lock us in the same space for what is closing in on a year seems like a recipe for disaster. But for the most part things have been really good. Don't get me wrong - we irritate each other - we [...]
How is your marriage doing at the moment? Maybe not something that has been fully on your mind given the state of the world, but things are about to get real... 38 hours to go, give or take, until Lockdown is a reality for South Africa. Hope you have your beans. No, i take that back, hoarding cans of baked beans is A TERRIBLE IDEA during these stuck-in-confined-spaces times. People with children and animals [...]
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 [...]
We head into the last 5 tips of this marriage series. If this has been helpful in any way please SHARE it on your social media and tag your friends so they can benefit as well. Would love to hear some summary thoughts you might have in the comments... Marriage Tip #36 Fight well. i do think because of the nature of marriage being between two people that each one looks quite significantly different from [...]
Some more marriage advice for you as we head into our final ten: Marriage Tip #31 Walk. Now i imagine there will be varying degrees of this for different people. i also imagine some couples will roll their eyes and instantly dismiss this because walking (and that's not your vibe). But i would suggest (with less exceptions than people who think they are the exceptions) that the amount you collectively enjoy walking or not should [...]
The next five married tips to help you think about and act on how to do marriage well: Marriage Tip #26 Rage, Rage against the selfishness of the me. Just as online people tend towards stupid [a brettfish original], offline people tend towards selfish. In a world that has at times whispered but more often shouted 'THIS IS ALL ABOUT YOU!' into your ear as it has watched you grow up, this should not be [...]
Marriage Tip #21 Tend towards the cleaner one. Now this is not to much specifically a marriage tip as it is a people-who-live-in-the-same-space tip and i probably observed this more living in community with tbV and others in Philly than with just me and Val. But it can be huge. The person who hates breadcrumbs on the counter is MUCH MORE emotionally invested than the person who doesn't care [or notice] breadcrumbs on the counter. [...]
Marriage Tip #16 Communication. Work at it. i touched on this yesterday when mentioning Expectation as missed expectations can be a huge source of conflict or resentment in marriage. And someone mentioned Communication which is key to having a healthy marriage. We looked at the five love languages in tip 5 and in some ways, i think communication works in a similar way. We communicate in different ways and we hear things or retain them [...]
Marriage Tip #11 My friend Robert Martin, who recently lost his wife, asked if he could share a tip and having gone through this with a best friend before i can echo so much of this: Treasure EVERY moment... I, unfortunately, sit in a place where my other half is no longer around to exercise tips 1-10. And there is much regret that I'm wrestling with. Time that we BOTH wasted in our lives together [...]
Marriage Tip #6 Be quick to deal with issues. The bible [whether you believe in it or not] has this great piece of wisdom: 'In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.' There are times when anger might be a justified response to something but the key is not letting that anger cause you to hurt your [...]
