Marriage Advice, Part 2

The Second Idea for Marriage and Relationships is:

Time is more important than you think.

How you spend your time (or lack thereof) will determine how you spend your life in relationship.

Setting your priorities straight will always benefit your relationship. Put God first, your spouse in a close second, your kids in a very close third, and everyone else in a distant fourth.

Too often a relationship goes south after one of the spouses pours all of their time into their career, their hobby, or their ministry. Once their partner is fed up and tired of getting no attention, it’s very hard to salvage what has already been lost. So choose your time wisely. Make sure that you are spending the majority of your time outside of work with your spouse and your children (if you have them), but that you still make time to do the things you are passionate about individually.

Set expectations before you are married (or sit down now and discuss it if you already are) of what you will choose to do together and what you still desire to do on your own. Once you have done so, make sure that you stay within the boundaries you have set up for time in pursuing your passions. If it is an activity that you can do together or one that you can at least do within the proximity of your spouse so that you can be together and talk, then pursue those things.

Also, make sure that you still allow yourself and your spouse to spend time with same sex friends apart from one another to keep valuable friendships alive. And make sure that you spend time with other married couples together. But often, married couples spend too much time with others and never enough alone time with each other, moving them further and further apart from each other. So always make sure that your time alone always outweighs your time with others.

And finally, it’s also important to note that you and your spouse should spend time with each other’s families, but not too much time without your spouse with you. You need to show support for your spouse in their relationship with their family, and need to show their families that you care about them (your spouse and their family). Spouses who spend too much time with their families apart from their partner, tend to be allowing their family to get far too involved with their marriage- often with out even realizing it. Once you and your spouse realize that your family/famous are too involved in your relationship, it is often too late and has already caused many problems in your marriage that are very difficult to repair.

So not only will this marriage not work without Jesus, it also will not work unless you realize that time is more important than you think.