6 Ways to Be a Good Friend to Your Spouse

Neil Miller
Sep 4, 2018 · 5 min read
“couple dancing” by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash

Robert Brault said, “The older I get, the less time I want to spend with the part of the human race that didn’t marry me.”

When asked what was the top factor that made them happy in marriage, wives said, by a 70% margin, that the top factor was the quality of the friendship. And when husbands were asked the same questions, their top factor, by a 70% margin, was the quality of the friendship. (source)

When I think about the most successful marriages that I know, one thing seems to be common–they are friends. They actually seem to enjoy each other and like spending time with one another. They have fun together, gel with each other, and know how to support one another.

One might think this is much easier in a love marriage as opposed to an arranged marriage, and sometimes that is true. But it can also happen that after going through the tumultuousness of secretly dating, getting engaged, and enduring the wedding process, you realize you don’t know each other as well as you thought.

In some ways arranged marriages have an advantage because from the beginning, you know you are going to have to work to find things that make you friends, which means there’s more intentional effort (if you do it right, of course).

How to Become Friends With Your Spouse

1. Find things you like doing together

Before marriage, when my wife and I were in college, I always felt a lot of pressure during events like Valentine’s Day and anniversaries. I would stress about planning something, knowing that she wouldn’t like it, and convinced that it would end up as a failure.

One year, when faced with this, she asked me what I really liked to do with her. Immediately I thought about a time when we had watched the young kids of a couple who had been married for a while and didn’t live near family. I liked being in that role with her and seeing her with the kids, and I enjoyed it too.

So for Valentine’s Day one year we watched other people’s kids.

Having mutual interests is important to build a common bond. Maybe it’s books you like reading and discussing, making food at home, visiting new places, going trekking, attending concerts, seeing family, playing sports, or lots of other things.

At the same time, don’t force things that just aren’t a fit. You might both be fitness freaks, but working out at the same time drives you mad. That’s fine, just leave it be and find something else you can enjoy.

2. Defend each other

One thing friends should always do is protect each other when one of them is threatened. This is not just in the physical sense, but more so in the social and emotional sense. If someone says something bad about your friend in front of you, you’ll immediately tell them to shut up and get lost. You should do the same for your spouse.

This holds true for family conversations as well. While you may need to be more tactful, it’s your role as a friend to not allow other people to speak ill of your spouse while you are near.

On the other hand, a good friend will often talk openly about how great they think the other person is. Make it a point to speak positively of your spouse, especially when you are around family and other close friends.

3. Appreciate the quirks

No matter who you are, you have some parts of your behaviors and habits that are strange to others. With strangers, we usually ignore these. With friends, we tend to laugh them off. With spouses, they become the basis for warfare.

In marriage, you will learn things about the other person you wish you never knew. Appreciating the strange parts about each other and not immediately judging them is part of being a good friend.

4. Don’t treat each other as a project

This might be the hardest one for lots of people. When they get married, a lot of people have the idea of the perfect spouse in their mind. After seeing their spouse for the first time, the thought is usually, “Ok, there’s potential here” (what we call a ‘fixer-upper’). Then we go to work making suggestions and comments meant to chisel away at that person until they become the person we think the should be.

This is disastrous for marriage (and child-raising). The person you married will change a lot over the decades you are together, and more often than not, you will be the cause of a lot of that change. But that doesn’t mean that you intentionally should look at your spouse as someone to improve, or a project to work on.

5. Call each other out, but rarely

It’s true that there are times in life when you really believe their quirks are damaging you or your family. Or, you can no longer accept the way your spouse acts and you really feel like this is something they need to hear.

As a spouse, you have a unique position to be able to show someone a reflection of how they live which they very rarely get to see from others.

I can remember when my wife confronted me about the tone I used when I talked with others that came off as very dismissive and arrogant. I wasn’t really aware of it, and even when she brought it up, I was resistant at first. But because I knew the reason behind her motivation, I was more willing to listen to it and respond to it.

But think back to your other friends. How often do you have these kind of one-on-one serious conversations where you are trying to correct their life? Once? Twice? Don’t make these sessions regular, but save them for the really important times.

6. Stick around in the dark times

The truest definition of a friend is someone who is there for you when no one else is. Your life may be going very well right now, but there will come some dark times when you feel all alone. I look back on my own life and can point to months where I felt totally lost. But I know that I even if I felt alone, I wasn’t. My wife was there, even when I had pushed everyone away and didn’t want anyone to come near.

A friend is the person who will always be there and you can’t get rid of. As a friend to your spouse, you should be present, even when everyone else is gone. This is something you can only communicate by doing, not by talking.

Nurture Fondness

Friendship doesn’t always come naturally, and as a spouse, you may need to put in a lot of effort and hard work. I like the phrase nurture fondness. It means you are actively looking for ways to enjoy being around your spouse. You do things that make you want to be together.

If you do nothing, the friendship will erode, and you may lose trust in each other which leads to all sorts of bad things.

Being a good friend to your spouse will help you navigate any difficulty you face. Find ways to enjoy being together, and you’ll have a lot of reasons to enjoy the many years you will have.

Newly Married

All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

Neil Miller

Written by

Trying to find a good place to land

Newly Married

All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

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