Don't Take Your Spouse for Granted | Practical Tips for a Healthy Marriage
/DOMINIKA RAMOS
A couple years ago I was talking with a woman who had a beautiful marriage and had raised a large brood of wonderful children. And I was like, "Okay, tell me the secret formula. Tell me the tips. Tell me the list of marriage and parenting books for success."
PHOTOGRAPHY: KAITLYN HEACOCK PHOTOGRAPHY
And she just laughed and said the fact I desired to have a good marriage and raise good children was a sign I was going in the right direction. I think my interior response was something like, "No really, I know you've got a ten-step program to holy married life tucked up your sleeve. Spill the beans, lady."
But she did say something that both surprised and helped me: never consider yourselves past the possibility of divorce. In other words, never take your marriage for granted. When stated in the latter terms, it sounds like clichéd marriage advice. When stated in the former terms, it's startling and perhaps affronts our Catholic sensibilities. After all, for devout couples who entered their marriages seriously, fully assenting to its character as an inviolable sacrament, the possibility of divorce seems absurdly far-fetched.
But around this same time, I heard another friend, who had been married a few years longer than us, say that she knew couples, faithful Catholic couples whose weddings she had been a bridesmaid in, who were now getting divorced. And that also startled me.
This is not to say that divorce is never the answer. The church, in her wisdom, allows it in such cases as abuse out of respect for the dignity of the victim. But in otherwise healthy marriages, it can be easy, I think, to consider your marriage too holy to be impervious to the wear and tear of sin and then to find you've slipped into a vipers' nest of presumption and resentment.
So how can we, practically speaking, not take our marriages for granted?
Pray together.
Not as a vague resolution but as a scheduled thing. The morning office or even just a morning offering. A daily or weekly examen. Spending ten or fifteen minutes reading Scripture or another spiritual work together and discussing. Any one of these can be a fruitful way of knowing what's on your spouse's heart.
Pray for each other.
When I remember, I like to say the noon Angelus for my husband because it's right at the height of the workday and I especially like novenas because they can be like tiny pilgrimages you undertake for someone. There are also many days when I say very short prayers and make small sacrifices for my husband's sake. As a result, I feel more closely united to him and am far more likely to have a tender-hearted response over the irksome things that are simply part of doing life with another person.
Read more: Creative Ways to Pray for your Spouse
Be attentive to their needs
Ask your spouse, "How can I help you today?" When my husband asks me this, I often find it's the question itself and not even the act of service that lightens my emotional load, because it shows the interest he takes in me and my daily life.
Avoid shaming.
Shame is such an immobilizing force. When do we ever elicit kindness from someone when we heap blame on their head? When do we ever feel light enough to pick ourselves up and do good when we're mired in the heaviness of shame. A sense of humor and a sense of reality--we're all human, we all fail--fosters the peace and openness needed in marriage.
Seek counsel.
Go to marriage counseling or to spiritual direction. I know of a couple, whose marriage is ostensibly not in crisis mode, yet who go to regular counseling as "marriage insurance." Brilliant.
In my pre-married life, I imagined marriage as a kind of promised land of easy peace and fulfillment. But marriage is an invitation to a continual process of conversion which, while hard, is also infinitely more beautiful than a life free of demands. If we cooperate with God, we will be changed and stripped of our idols, thus becoming Christ-bearers to those within and beyond the walls of our homes.
