Dolores Smyth
1. Make Your House a Home
When you’re first married, decorating your house so that it feels like a home can be daunting. When decorating, one thing to keep in mind is that your home should reflect the things that make both you and your partner happy. This may include specific colors and scents or certain furniture and styles. Agreeing on how to make your house a home may be a bit tricky if you and your other half have wildly different tastes and behaviors. This is where a compromise is in order.
Something that many couples can agree on is that the kitchen is the heart of the home. Consider making your kitchen a welcoming place to come home to and keeping it well-stocked for a relaxing and enjoyable way to end a long workday.
2. Share At Least One Meal Daily
Throughout your marriage, you may find that sharing a daily meal with your spouse becomes inconvenient. You may have different job schedules and, therefore, different sleep schedules. You may already have children who constantly keep you on the go, or you may have responsibilities outside the home that make it easier for you or your spouse to eat on the run.
If any of this sounds familiar, consider the following. Eventually, eating a meal together daily may be the only time you and your spouse are fully present and focused on one another throughout the day.
Sharing and enjoying food together makes you slow down and have meaningful interactions. Pick a time of day that works for both of you to sit down, turn off the phones and other devices, enjoy a meal together, and check-in with each other. The good food will nourish your body, while the good habit will nourish your marriage.
3. Stick Up for Each Other
When you look at your beloved, you may not be able to imagine anyone who doesn’t think that he or she is as wonderful as you do. Nothing bursts this newlywed bubble faster than when someone you know disparages your spouse.. Unfortunately, this This can be especially hurtful when the critic is a friend or relative is a reality that many married couples have had to endure and that some married couples with poor boundaries have been unable to surpass.
If you want your marriage to thrive, take your cue from longtime, happily married couples who say that making each other feel supported and respected is key to the success of their union. Simply put, you will help your marriage grow if you have each other’s back in both the easy and the hard times and if you assert firm boundaries with anyone who routinely causes tension in your marriage.
4. Refuse to compare your marriage to someone else’s
Just as every individual is unique, every couple is unique too. Thriving couples know that comparing your marriage to someone else’s overlooks that uniqueness and tempts you to make changes to your marriage that might suit someone else’s relationship but that may be a poor fit in yours.
Successful pairs also know that idealizing someone else’s marriage is dangerous because it distracts you from nurturing your own marriage with what it needs to flourish. Since no one is perfect, it stands to reason that no marriage is perfect either, no matter how it looks from the outside or on social media. Frankly, you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.
People in good marriages understand the importance of doing what’s best for their relationship instead of getting hung up on “keeping up” with other couples.
