Marriage Advice: 5 Tips to Keep the Home Fires Burning

Marriage is one of the first gifts that God gave human beings in the beginning. While our relationships have become messier and messier with the entrance and ubiquitous presence of sin in the world and the additional complications of living in the 21st century, it remains true to say that marriage is a gift and a blessing. It should go without saying that this gift is one that ought to be nurtured and protected. How does one go about doing this and keep the home fires burning through the years? Here are five pieces of marriage advice for keeping your marriage healthy and the home fires burning through the good times and in difficult circumstances.

Marriage Advice: 5 Tips to Keep the Flames Burning

1. Keep enjoying each other

Life can put you through the wringer. Whether it’s through sickness, work difficulties, financial trouble, infertility, trouble with in-laws, or one of any number of problems that can come your way. One of the books of the Bible that probably ought to get more airtime is the Song of Songs. In it are countless descriptions of these two lovers taking delight in one another.

“Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste” (Song of Songs 2:3). “How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! … You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you” says other verses. These two lovers are besotted with one another, and it shows.

Taking delight in one another has its physical dimension. Sex is another of God’s good gifts to humanity, and married couples are meant to continue enjoying it (1 Corinthians 7). Delighting in each other looks like appreciating your spouse’s smile, their hands, or whatever draws your attention. As we get older, yes, our bodies reflect the passage of time, but that doesn’t mean you stop appreciating one another.

Beyond the physical, people also have other dimensions, like their personalities, their wisdom, and their perspective on life. Enjoying your spouse may look like enjoying a road trip together, loving the way your spouse makes your favorite meal, enjoying seeing your spouse at work, how they deal with your children and grandchildren, taking on a new hobby together, or simply holding hands at the end of a long day. Take the time to enjoy the little and big moments, to appreciate your spouse anew as you continue to develop as people.

2. Listen to your lover

The ability to listen well to others will take you far in this life. Not only are great listening skills something to be applied in work settings, but they are a blessing to have and use in your personal relationships. Sometimes the older we get and the longer we spend with someone, we stop paying attention.

Young lovers spend time combing through conversations with one another looking for clues about who their partner is and what they like. They ask questions, probing what was said. They get rid of distractions so they can pay rapt attention to the person in front of them. These aspects of effective listening that are present in the early seasons of a relationship can disappear over time.

Good and empathetic listening is a skill that people in a relationship need to practice. It helps a couple to avoid misunderstandings, to communicate what they need, and to be as well as feel heard. It’s handy in the good times and is crucial in the fallow seasons when things are tough. Great communication allows a couple to know where they are in the relationship, how they are going to tackle the situations they face, and to keep one another in the loop. It can also ward off resentment

3. Grow together

People change. We go through seasons, as do the relationships we find ourselves in. In marriage, a couple must learn to recognize the seasons the relationship is in, giving each other room to grow and keep up with changes.

One good example is that going from a couple with no children to having children changes the dynamics in the marriage. Motherhood and fatherhood can bring a shift in priorities, and even in love languages.

Once, receiving a gift may have been the chief love language of one of the spouses, but that can shift to quality time with each other as that becomes a scarcer commodity. The value of good communication, as pointed out earlier, is that the couple stays abreast of these changes and give one another the space to go through changes, adapting to meet the new needs that arise.

As a couple gets older, the activities they were once able to and enjoyed participating in may change. Explore those changes together, find new ways to bond, new hobbies that occupy you, other ways to stay fit or be entertained.

Growing together also means learning to keep up your spiritual disciplines through the years, continuing to put down your roots deeper and deeper in Jesus. Every couple has their own rhythms of prayer, reading Scripture, being part of the Church, and engaging in other spiritual disciplines.

As one grows spiritually, new insights are gained that can shift the trajectory of your life. A deeper passion for missions might suggest a shift in the family budget toward supporting missionaries, or the family making a change in career and finding themselves on the mission field. Sharing your spiritual insights (again, good communication!) allows a couple to continue growing apace.

4. Batten down the hatches

Marital bliss can blind you to the reality that things aren’t always going to be rosy. As life on this side of eternity has seasons of plenty and famine, a couple needs to have good, deep roots to weather the rough patches. Having a good support system and skills for coping with stress will place a couple in the position of being able to withstand the hardships of life.

Losses such as death, or losing a job, and stresses such as sickness in the family, poor finances, or having to move can add untold pressure on a couple. If they walk into the situation unprepared, and they don’t have the tools to keep going despite the unfavorable circumstances, the strain and damage to them and their relationship may be irreparable.

Counseling isn’t just for when things go wrong. Ongoing marriage counseling can give a couple the tools they need to deal with stress, help them learn to communicate better with one another, to learn to appreciate each other, and learn to overcome behavioral challenges and negative thought patterns stemming from their upbringing.

While one can never really be ready for all that life can throw at you, when those other challenges arise, the couple has a toolkit to deploy to cope with challenges and figure out their next steps.

5. Mistakes happen – repent and let go

When you live with someone long enough, you realize just how much of a sinner they are. Of course, they too will recognize the same about you. Beyond the mistakes we make through miscommunication and misunderstanding, there are things people do out of anger, jealousy, lust, and selfishness that can harm their spouse. When that happens, repentance needs to happen.

Repentance is a word we don’t often use these days. It simply means to see that you’re going in the wrong direction and to turn from that into a new way of thinking about and doing things. Marriage is about the two becoming one, forging ahead to make a life together. That requires making mutual compromises so that each spouse has an opportunity to be the best person they can be.

Our selfishness can get in the way of that, and God in his grace often reveals that selfishness to us. The choice, then, is to repent and seek the good of the other and the marriage. That goes contrary to what we hear our culture telling us about putting ourselves first. Living in the way of serving your spouse requires nothing short of faith.

When mistakes are made, the other side of the equation is the choice of whether to forgive the erring spouse. Forgiveness is a choice; it can’t be compelled and must be given freely. It’s not saying what was done was okay – in fact, forgiveness is predicated on the fact that something inexcusable was done.

Forgiveness is the wronged partner saying that they will not hold what was done to them over or against the other person, just as God has dealt with us and our failings (Ephesians 4:32). They will not seek to punish them for it, though there may be natural consequences to the initial wrong act that forgiveness doesn’t erase. Forgiveness is thus a posture of the heart that forestalls the development of resentment and bitterness, two feelings that can eat away at a marriage from the inside.

Christian Marriage Counseling

Marriage is a delicate dance that draws on the best that a couple has to offer to make their life together work. Challenges arise in marriage, as they do in every other relationship; how the couple meets those challenges and goes through them will determine whether they keep the home fires burning or not.

More than the challenges, married life gives a couple an unparalleled experience and opportunity to enjoy life together, to be surprised, and grow in fresh and exciting ways that could never have happened outside of that intimate bond.

If you’re looking for additional marriage advice beyond this article, we invite you to browse the counselor directory to schedule an appointment for Christian couples counseling in Vancouver, Washington.