God wants to teach us not to dismiss our mate’s concerns, even if we see no value or importance in them, because if it distresses him/her, we need to take it seriously. If it is important to our mate, then it is of paramount importance to us. Our good friend, Bill, and my husband both call us – their wives - “My Bride.”
This reminds these men of our initial commitment, loving feelings, creative dating, and joyful relationship. They never forget that they can maintain the initial feelings of dating “their one” by treating our marriage with the same respect, resourcefulness, delight, focus, and planned activities that they did when they first dated us.
This way we stay connected with those deep regards, appreciation, inspiration, compassion, connection, priority, excitement, and dedication to play time that they used in order to pursue us in the first place. This relationship also helps us to maintain the spark between us that we initially fell in love with, before the demands of vocations, children, in-laws, bills, shared housing, prickly people, etc. robbed us of relaxed couple time.
Another issue we face in this modern world are the beeps, buzzes, vibrations, and rings of emails, texts, phone calls, and messages from various social media sites, work related issues, family, and friends that interrupt our immediate focus on our mate.
Therefore, we need to leave our phone in the car and only take time to consult it after our date and before we actually go home, just in case there is some emergency that truly demands our attention at the moment. Focusing our time and attention only on one another is vitally important to the health of our marriage.
Continuing to dress up at home and on dates shows that we care about how we look. We went through multiple outfits prior to our initial dates because we wanted to astonish each other and add that “wow” factor to the impression we made. Living in the “wow” factor regardless of how many years we have been married will keep the home fires burning between us.
Relating with extra attentiveness, nurturing, patience, understanding, and commitment - more with each passing year of marriage - ensures a loving, committed relationship. This makes our spouse feel like he/she really matters to us, and reminds us to make one another our priority, second only to God.
Prayer:
Father God, thank You for bringing our mate into our life. Instill in us the value of paying attention to any issues that arise between us, and to make time to rationally address and pray about them together before they escalate into an argument. Remind us that sweeping problems under the rug in order to avoid confrontation is never a good idea, because this only causes them to emerge at an inopportune time when we are tired or vulnerable.
Remind us to keep You as the focus of our life, to consult You in every decision we ever make (Proverbs 3:5-6), and to consider the feelings of our mate in everything we think, say, and do. We prefer one another; but remind us not to neglect our self while doing this. Help us to communicate to our partner our personal boundaries, our preferences, our likes, dislikes, etc. This takes the guess work out of our relationship and keeps our focus on You where it belongs.
Thoughts for the Day:
Believing before marriage that we can change our spouse after we are married is a naive and deadly mindset. If we do not respect, enjoy, and accept each other as we are while we are dating, we will eventually face frustration that may turn to bitterness after marriage, because we will never successfully change each other. Loving one another in our respective “love language” will insure a more devoted relationship that lasts a lifetime.
