I recently hung out with a group of musicians—two of whom are getting married in the next few months.
After enjoying the damage done by Shake Shack, I was asked for advice about how to have a happy and successful marriage.
The below immediately came to mind. Thought I’d share with you too.
Enjoy.
Have a blast.
The first thing to go for many marriages is laughter.
Marriage is hard. You’ll have the inevitable conflicts, pet peeves, misunderstandings, and the like.
Christie has this disarming thing she’ll say when we’re arguing: “Babe, I don’t have a conspiracy against you. I didn’t wake up this morning scheming how I could drive you crazy today.” Love my girl.
Don’t take things so seriously. Just communicate. Communicate! And love each other, be there for each other, pray together, and champion each other.
Yes, have a date night. Do fun things together. But more so, find the fun in the daily grind of marriage.
Flirt.
Be naughty.
Learn and speak each other’s love language.
Try to make each other laugh out loud. When all else fails, I send Christie funny marriage tweets, cat memes, and french bulldog videos. I love to hear her laugh.
G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” And so can your marriage if you do the same.
Guard your score.
Be good and wise stewards of your finances.
A great way to do so is to guard your credit score.
My dad gave me this advice before Christie and I was married. He told me to vigilantly protect my credit score because it would determine if we qualified for loans, got favorable interest rates, showed wisdom if background-checked by employers, and so on.
There have been seasons where our credit score took a significant hit. But we labored to drive it back up.
In short, guard your credit score. Or do what you have to do to get it back in good or excellent standing.
In turn, you can have more fun in your marriage because you’ve at least tamed this beast best you can.
Lose arguments.
Pride is the carbon monoxide that subtly poisons you… and your marriage.
Don’t win arguments at the cost of the relationship.
Read that again.
Rinse and repeat.
For life.
Enjoy the peaches.
I once heard a pastor talk about a can of peaches. He said God has given a can of peaches to everyone. The peaches on the label look yummy. But it’s just a picture on a can.
The sweetness is not found with the can of peaches, but in the can of peaches.
You need a can opener to get into that sweetness—the sweetness of meaning, purpose, and joy in your life and marriage.
Well… Jesus is the can opener.
Center your marriage on Christ.
And the sweetness of the marriage you desire will be increasingly yours.
And you get Shake Shack thrown in.
This was refreshing Alex & I have been married 21 years (we got hitched in the 7th Grade), we’ve been through it all with much more to come, I’m sure. Humor by far has extinguished some ridiculous arguments. Sometimes one of us will send a movie quote that disarms the other. I love to hear him laugh when I’ve sent a hilarious picture or meme. Also keeps us from taking ourselves so seriously. This morning while having my quiet time I wrote these verses down on a sticky note and posted by my kitchen sink (figured I’d put it some place I often find myself)…”Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres”.
1Cor 13:6-7
Amy
Thank you for these words of wisdom. Seems like a no brainer, but the truth is, sometimes we lose sight of what is important when we are living our daily lives.
Thank you for these excellent tips and reminders. Because we are bound together, our spouses intimately and intrinsically experience the effects of all we do or don’t do, how we act and react, think and feel, and on down the line. When so much of the daily grind is on auto pilot, these are refreshing and life-giving departures. Thank you, Jarrod!