Don’t wait for the rough patch before investing in your marriage

The best time to enhance your marriage is in the good times

I read Jonas Ellison’s post earlier about friends not letting friends analyse their lives when they’re feeling down. Why do we have this tendency to only analyse our lives when things are falling apart? As Jonas says:

You feel like you’re doing the right thing. You just got dumped, fired, or slighted, so you go home, lay down on your bed, and stare up at the ceiling trying to ‘figure it out’.

Never. A good. Idea.

All this reminded me of the Marriage Course I sometimes help run. The minute you suggest to a couple the idea of doing it, many of them immediately assume it’s not for them because, in their own words, ‘our marriage is fine’.

Whenever we think of anything like a marriage course or counselling, we think of it as something to do when we’re going through a rough patch.

Of course, if we have hit a rough patch, taking the time for some counselling is definitely a good idea.

But wouldn’t it be better if we invested in our relationships before we hit the rough patch and then maybe avoid some of these rough patches completely?

It is far easier to work on a marriage and improve it when the relationship is in a good place than once things have started to deteriorate.

And I get it: who wants to admit they need the help of something like a marriage course? Won’t people immediately think my marriage is in trouble? At the same time, who of us is dumb enough to think we don’t need help sometimes to make our marriage stronger?

The truth is that what people think is irrelevant.

Which is wiser: to invest in and enhance our marriage, or to worry about what people will think about us investing in and enhancing our marriage?

It’s a no brainer.

So yes, like Jonas says, don’t wait for the bad times to do the self-analysis.

Do it while the times are good—and don’t worry about what anyone else thinks.

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Image: Redd Angelo