How to Stay Happily Married
Secrets to marriage longevity
My husband and I have been married for seventeen years. There have been many ups and downs, but overall we have been happy. We have learned some things through the years to keep our marriage happy. Here are my three tips for staying in a happy marriage for the long haul.
Love is a decision
A long marriage is admirable, but it also gives you security. I hear people say that they have fallen out of love, but I don’t think that is possible. I say that because love is a decision. We can’t base our life on feelings, we need to base it on our thoughts.
We can choose the life we want and we can choose the thoughts we think.
We can decide to love someone, even when they can be unloveable. Haven’t we been unloveable ourselves from time to time? I am grateful for those who have stuck around me despite my imperfections.
The decision has to be made by both partners of course. I don’t advocate staying in an abusive marriage (mentally, physically, or emotionally), but know that feelings come and go, and marriage is a commitment and choice to be faithful.
Look to serve, more than you look to be served
We tend to be so self-centred in life. Naturally, we are looking out for what is best for us in any given situation. While that is good to an extent, it’s not the best way to have a happy marriage.
The higher way of living is to look at how we can be a blessing to others, and especially to our spouse. It’s easy to feel self-pity when we look at others around us and think they have it better, but the saying bloom where you are planted is true.
A great way to get over self-centeredness in marriage to serve our spouse, even when we don’t feel like it. That goes back to the part of love being a decision and not a feeling.
We don’t often feel like doing a lot of things that are for the good of others. However, we decide to be a helper to our spouse when we get married. We always need to look for ways to support them.
Keep your marriage a top priority
When I said yes to getting married, I said yes to commit to the character of the person. I said yes to marrying my best friend. Before everything else, my husband and I were best friends.
We have fought and disagreed, but we have both remembered that we ultimately respect one another for the person that we are.
We have had eight children in these last seventeen years of marriage, and we have every reason in the busyness of raising them to push our friendship to the side.
On top of mothering, I am also am a writer, student, entrepreneur, and teacher. My husband has been in the military our entire marriage. We have sometimes spent half of the year apart, and have gone a month without even being able to communicate.
Through that, we have always made each other a top priority.
We know that we are the pillars of our house for our children, but also the pillars to others in the community. When our children were all younger, we would get a babysitter and go out for dates.
Now that our kids are older, we walk together almost every day and have coffee dates. Even when your children are little, you can put them to bed and have a date at your house.
Final thoughts
Above all, marriage is good and honourable. It brings stability to a family and security to yourself and others. It’s worth putting in concentrated effort to keep healthy.
It’s worth doing everything in your power to serve and to look to the needs of your spouse as more significant than your own. As the years go by and the struggles and temptations that can pull apart a marriage are overcome, marriage only gets sweeter.
