Habits of a Healthy Marriage

Habits of a Healthy Marriage

The Institute for Family Studies released an insightful article revealing five habits that could keep a married couple happy and healthy and out of divorce court. The habits are:

  1. Combine your bank account

  2. Spend quality time together

  3. Remove substances like alcohol from your life

  4. Create digital trust

  5. Do growing things together

The one that struck me the most was the final habit of growing together. The others are logistical. I can remove the liquor from the cabinet. I can remove the password from my phone and share my location. I can plan a date night and we can join bank accounts.

The last one is aspirational.

I have to check in with myself first and ask: Am I growing? Am I doing things in live that are challenging me to grow? And if it is true that I am becoming a type of person, have I invited my spouse into a journey of becoming something together?

One of the most common revelations I have heard from couples desiring to separate is that over time they had grown apart.

If they worked out, they did it during time and in places where their spouse was not able to join them. If they read books or listened to podcasts, they did not do so alongside or at least share the information with their spouse. And if they did religious activities like pray or attend church, they did so without their spouses involvement.

What at first seems like courtesy, not involving the partner because they are not interested, becomes a wedge. One spouse was learning how to live and grow in one way, while the other was creating a whole different way of living and being. Over years, suddenly the dreams and goals and values of the partners have become their own. They are no longer partners, but individuals coexisting.

It is impossible for a marriage to function unless there is buy in from two people to grow towards some kind of life together. Learning together. Working together.

Every person is on a development path. If you are in a marriage, it is no longer you alone who needs to be developed, but the married couple in unison.

That is not to say that you need to love to do everything your partner likes to do. But you do need to find the things that you will grow together in and prioritize those things.

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