15 Successful Marriage Tips Happy Couples Live By
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[Married? Divorced? About to Get Hitched? – This will be the best thing you read all week. Guaranteed. Grab a cup of coffee and let’s jump in]
You have heard that a successful marriage takes hard work. While this is true, people seem to have an aversion to the word “work,” so let’s see if we can frame this a little bit differently.
A successful marriage takes energy, and this does not necessarily have to be drudgery. It really boils down to your outlook and philosophy of marriage.
As it turns out, your outlook and philosophy are under your complete control. That being the case, I’ve put together a list that will give you some perspective about your marriage.
In these 15 successful marriage tips, we’ll discuss a variety of time-tested principles that have been used through generations of countless successful marriages. If you apply just 10% of the successful marriage tips here, I can virtually guarantee that you have a better marriage.
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So let’s dig in, here are the 15 successful marriage tips:
(1) – Don’t Worry About What Other People Think
Your marriage is just that: yours. You have the right to do with it what you will, it’s your masterpiece. We all spend so much time worrying about what other people think, but you know what other people are thinking about? They’re worried about what you think of them! Don’t spend too much energy trying to conform to some
(2)- Love is Not About How You Feel
It’s about how you make your spouse feel. We have a natural tendency to always be focused on ourselves, but when you live for someone else, beautiful things happen.
(3) – Create the Helpful Habits
Habits make for poor masters, but make for excellent slaves.
(4)- Love is Commitment
When we’re young, we think of love as that overwhelming emotion that sweeps us up and makes us do silly things. While this is a wonderful aspect of love, we don’t live the majority of ours lives young! This is nothing to worry about, just the natural order of things. When you two exchanged vows, you promised to be there for each other. The word “commitment” gets thrown around a lot, so maybe it’s time to re-examine your commitment. When you do something for your spouse, that’s commitment (which is love). When you sacrifice something
(5)- Take a Look at Your Finances -Early and Often
You many have heard that arguments over money are the numero uno reason for divorce. You heard right! Most people don’t have a clue how to manage their money. And why should they? We grow up without any financial training whatsoever, and discussing money publically is taboo. We are bombarded by literally thousands of advertising messages every single day, and we live in a culture that absolutely worships conspicuous consumption.
Furthermore, unless we’re lucky enough to be guided by someone who cares (not someone earning a commission off of our financial decisions), we’re rudderless ships at best.
So what happens to a ship with no direction? It’s cast about any which way the wind blows. Turns out the “wind” in our financial lives is the laser-focused messages of marketers everywhere. If you don’t know how to feel or what to buy at any given moment, there are thousands of well crafted messages vying for your attention and dying to tell you what to do.
The result of this lack of direction is that you’re working your tail off to make money to throw away to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t care about. Vicious cycle, read that again and make sure that isn’t you. If it is, get crackin’ on a solution today. It will literally be one of the best things you’ll ever do for your marriage. This is easily the most important of the successful marriage tips on this list.
Take a look at your household finances as early as possible in your marriage. I highly recommend reading anything by Dave Ramsey and taking a class of his if possible. You have the power to control what may be one of the most important areas of your marriage, take control as soon as possible and the peace you will feel is indescribable.
(6)- Play to Your Strengths
Hopefully by this point is your life you’re not still wasting a ton of energy trying to improve your weakest talents. You’ve always gravitated naturally to certain areas of interest and expertise. Your spouse has also always naturally done this. Set some time aside, alone or as a couple, to look at your strengths.
Are you banging your head against a wall working on something that your spouse is better at? If so, let them handle it or help you out. There may be things that you take joy in that drive your spouse crazy, make sure you handle those things for each other.
By playing to your strengths,
(7)- Stay in the Moment
“We can’t wait to get married, we are so in love!”
“We can’t wait to move into that house, we are really going places!”
“We can’t wait for the baby, he’s going to be so beautiful!”
Other things to plug in here: I can’t wait for the promotion, new car, bigger house, etc.
These are all things I’ve said in my life, and getting to the next step is always fun. You need to bear in mind, however, that the vast majority of your life is lived day to day. To be happy, you need to be happy with the day to day stuff.
If you’re always spending every moment in anticipation of the next big thing, you’re probably overlooking some beautiful moments happening right now.
Stay in the moment. Once a moment is gone, it is absolutely gone forever.
Your baby will never be so small again, enjoy this phase of their life.
You will never again be as young as you are now, enjoy your youth.
No matter how things are going in your life right now, you will look back on them fondly (or at least gratefully) in ten years.
Stay in the moment always, and you’ll have lived a full life when you come to the end of your journey.
(8) – Contribute Regularly to Your Marriage Account
Don’t worry, I’m done dispensing financial advice here. When I refer to your Marriage Account, I’m talking about that invisible level of goodwill you both feel towards each other. When you buy your wife flowers, you’re making a deposit to the Marriage Account. When you go down on your husband (yep, you read that right), you’re making a deposit into the Marriage Account.
There will inevitably come times when unexpected withdraws are necessary (broken promises, mistakes, etc), and having a healthy cushion in the Marriage Account will keep spirits high in your household.
(9) – Write Notes
Who doesn’t appreciate a note telling them how great they are? Would you appreciate this? Yep, you would. Guess what, so would your spouse! What kind of a time investment are we talking about here?
15 seconds.
Here’s a suggestion for the creatively challenged: “Honey, I love you and I love our life together. You’re the best, and you make me happy.”
Not the toughest of these successful marriage tips, but if you haven’t written your spouse a sweet note in the last month, do it today.
(10) – Don’t Air Dirty Laundry
Don Henley had it right: “People love it when you lose, they love dirty laundry.”
I don’t know why humans crave juicy gossip, but the popularity of E News proves we can’t get enough. If you’ve got some internal strife going on in your marriage, don’t make it public by complaining about your partner to groups of people.
Doing this makes you look untrustworthy, and the life of whatever tails you tell may be longer than you know. Share your troubles privately with family or close friends, but don’t invite everyone to a spectacle.
If public invitations to spectacles involving your private matters are your way of getting attention, please examine and rethink your sad little life.
(11) -Celebrate Small Victories
You should celebrate all victories, but I’m mentioning the small victories here because somebody needs to stick up for them. Your life is hard enough without you belittling your accomplishments.
Celebrate all of ‘em, you earned it.
(12) – Laugh
When was the last time you had a good laugh together? Hopefully it was earlier today, but maybe not. Laughing is so good for our immune system, and so great for our relationships. Get some laughter however you need to.
If you’re stuck for ideas, prowl the internet to find some funny videos. I can’t figure out why watching others fall down is so funny, but it always is.
(13) – Talk About Any Purchase Over $300
Ah, I told you I was done with the finance stuff, but I lied.
Add some context – we are all far more blessed than we ever realize. It’s very easy to lose sight of this blessing however, and adding some perspective to your life will highlight for you how Lucky you are.
(14) – Learn Each Others Language’
We tend think others think like we do. “Why would someone do ____?” We often ask ourselves. The answer is that the person that just did _____ has a completely different way of seeing the world than you do.
Even though your spouse and you may be very compatible, complimentary, or both, you still are very different people with a billion different life experiences that shaped your unique character.
Spend some time figuring out what makes each of you tick. Catering to your partner’s unique likes and avoiding their unique dislikes is one of the best successful marriage tips you can implement.
(15) – Plan for Sex
Ugh, talk about making something fun a drag! Seriously, when you were 18 did you ever think you’d be pathetic enough to have to schedule sex? Ok, just kidding. But, as life’s responsibilities add up, sex often seems to fall by the wayside. It may not be anyone’s fault, it just kind of happens.
So, when I talk about planning sex I’m not talking about blocking off an hour in your Outlook or iPhone. Rather, I’m advising that you seize the opportunity when you see it. Do you have a few minutes you can spare here or there? If you do, make sex it a priority! True, you may both be tired, but by purposefully taking sex off the back burner whenever you possibly can, you’ll heat your marriage up. It’s also one of the more fun successful marriage tips in this list.
