This post begins a multipart series of tips for marital bliss. I hope you appreciate my suggestions, and that they contribute to a smoother ride for you and your beloved companion.

Read the previous posts here:
Part 1 -http://www.journeymanproject.org/?p=81
Part 2 -http://www.journeymanproject.org/?p=93
Part 3 -http://www.journeymanproject.org/?p=96

Park the Car, Rent a Limo, and Leave the Kids with Your Parents:
On your fifteenth cup of Texaco coffee? Tired of hearing the kids ask, “Are we there yet?” Starting to count the lines in the middle of the road? Good. It’s time for some extreme action. That’s right, ditch fiscal and domestic responsibility for the weekend. Park the Car, Rent a Limo, and Leave the Kids with Your Parents for a few days.

Life always tends to spiral into the steady plodding of humdrum responsibilities and habits. That’s a great thing! Habits and responsibilities are what raise children, provide a comfortable home, and built dynasties. Unfortunately, they don’t nurture motivation and perspective. Every now and then, you’ve got to get a fresh view of your life. Every once in a while, tragedy or reward will provide that opportunity for you…but these circumstances hardly provide opportunities to nurture your marriage. So plan them yourselves.

Stacy and I get away once every four months, three times a year. We check out of the apartment and into a nice hotel, even if it’s only 10 miles away. We spend a few days eating out, visiting new places, and pursuing new interests. Because we’re together 24/7 away from home, we stop discussing bills and work, and start talking about struggles, insights, and plans for the future. As a result, we starting getting that romantic feeling again, and just enjoy one another’s company. While we wish the vacation lasted longer, we feel better about going back to work after it’s over. And it tends to keep that feeling of “us” alive apart from the bills, the kids, and the home that tend to define us for the over 350 days of the year.

A lot of people talk about doing a date night once a week, where you get out of the house once every week or two. While I agree that this is a great idea, you need more than a couple of hours a week to kindle the flame. My suggestion: do both.

This post begins a multipart series of tips for marital bliss. I hope you appreciate my suggestions, and that they contribute to a smoother ride for you and your beloved companion.

Read the previous posts here:
Part 1 -http://www.journeymanproject.org/?p=81
Part 2 -http://www.journeymanproject.org/?p=93

Drop Expectations & Welcome the Adventure:

Sometimes the worst enemy of a great road trip is lofty expectations. Have you ever followed one of those grand travel center brochures to a complete waste of time? Ever visited the world’s coolest shopping center in Atlanta, Denver, or Austin? We’ve seen them all. Our review: “underwhelming”.

Marriage can be like that too. What’s sex like to someone who’s watched prime-time television? Underwhelming. What’s romance like in marriage compared to the thrill ride of dating? Underwhelming. Why? Expectations. Life, both secular and sacred, can give us unrealistic expectations for the future. There is nothing harder on a spouse than expecting him or her to live up to the example of your father or your dream husband after one year of marriage. Change takes time. Change takes encouragement, not condemnation.

This is not to say that you should expect the worst for your marriage, or that you shouldn’t consider it a relationship with a lot of thrills in store for your life. But be realistic, and plan to let the best parts of married life surprise you. Celebrate the flowers when he brings them home for you. Thank her for dinner, even when it’s not as good as Olive Garden. And find something worthwhile to talk about around the world’s largest Cast Iron Skillet. The more you allow the contributions of your spouse to thrill you, the more that you are thankful for them, the more they will want to do them for you.

]]> http://www.journeymanproject.org/thoughts/marriage-and-the-road-trip-part-3-of-4/feed/ 0 http://www.journeymanproject.org/thoughts/marriage-and-the-road-trip-part-2-of-4/ http://www.journeymanproject.org/thoughts/marriage-and-the-road-trip-part-2-of-4/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:09:38 +0000 admin http://www.journeymanproject.org/?p=93

Married life can be comparable to an extended road trip…spending long hours together deciding where to go, how to get there, what to eat and who’s driving. There’s bad weather, dull conversations, and traffic to make the trip difficult sometimes (not to mention occasionally getting lost), however, find the right traveling companion and follow a few key rules of road etiquette, and your bound to have a great time…and collect a lot of great road trip memories.

This post continues a multipart series of tips for marital bliss. I hope you appreciate my suggestions, and that they contribute to a smoother ride for you and your beloved companion.

Read Part 1 Here: http://www.journeymanproject.org/?p=81

Play to Your Spouse’s Strengths (and acknowledge your weaknesses)-

Rarely are two people gifted with equal navigational abilities. Stacy and I don’t just have different ways of navigating, we have different strengths and weaknesses that we’ve learned to balance on our trips. I navigate by map. I need to see the big picture in order to get there. Stacy needs step by step directions. She’s lost without street names. In cities like Tulsa, where everything is laid out in a grid by numbers, Stacy navigates. She knows that to get from 71^st to 105^th, we need to go east…she even knows which way east is without a compass. I just pull over and look at the map. On the other hand, if we’re in Atlanta, I drive. Atlanta is a twisting network of roads that constantly change names. There are no roads that go east or west, for more than a half-mile. Stacy has called me lost and crying from that city before. I have the picture in my head. Forget the road names, just give me the destination and I can get you there!

There are a lot of gifts between couples other than navigational skills. Some people are detail-oriented, others are big picture people. Some are entertainers and love to be around people, others prefer to spend their time reading, writing, or reflecting. Some feel loved when you give them a note, others want you to hold their hand. If you aren’t aware of the differences between you and your spouse, find out right away. You will be absolutely astounded at how much depth knowing your differences will bring to your relationship. Figure out their personality and their life aspirations as soon as you can. Most importantly, find out the emotional needs of your spouse. For help, check out the books, Fall in Love, Stay in Love by William Harvey and Personality Plus by Florence Littauer. You’ll be very glad you did!

This post begins a multipart series of tips for marital bliss. I hope you appreciate my suggestions, and that they contribute to a smoother ride for you and your beloved companion.

Trip Tip #1: Make Decisions Together –
One of the greatest rules I learned in marriage is to decide together. When you make your decisions as a couple, your achievements, problems, and mistakes will all be shared. In my life, those shared decisions kept me from being able to placing the blame on my spouse. Whenever I felt the temptation to be angry at Stacy, I was convicted by the fact that we had discussed the issue at hand, and make the final decision together. If I had agreed to the idea, regardless of whether it was originally her idea, it was not our problem, or our mistake. We call this the policy of enthusiastic agreement. Good couples don’t fight each other over things and they don’t avoid argument, they discuss them without hurting each other’s feelings and come to a decision they both appreciate.

This was HUGE for us when it came to finances. I’m a spender, and buying things without discussing them with Stacy was a big point of tension between us when we were first married. Now, I know that my job is not to find a good deal, but to find a good deal and then convince her that buying an item is a great idea. If we can’t agree to buy it, then I don’t. I may pass up a few good deals now and then, but agreement before the purchase means a much smoother ride for the both of us.