It is easy for us to be complacent when our marriage seems peaceful and blissful. We can retire to our comfort zone and watch our marriages drift quietly; affection and attention evaporate because of carelessness and complacency.
There are things you need to do about your marriage if you feel all is well with your home. To avoid complacency and drifting, the following are important:
1) PRAY ALONE: Create time to pray alone and study the word of God. This will help you to grow gracefully. If you are better spiritually, you will be better for your spouse. Take time to pray to God daily and grow from strength to strength.
2) PRAY TOGETHER: Make it your habit to pray with your spouse daily. Praying together will make your marriage tide flow steadily and make it stronger. It will make your minds fonder.
3) LEARN MORE: Keep on learning. Never at any time think you’ve known it all about marriage, that will be dangerous. You need to be eager to learn and improve every day and be a better spouse.
4) DATE MORE: Create time to go out together more than ever before. Don’t give room for routine, it kills marriages. Routine makes it monotonous, uninteresting, and destroys fun and fondness.
5) DON’T SWEEP OFFENCES UNDER THE CARPET: When you are offended, discuss with your spouse in love instead of sweeping under the carpet. If you do that one day, you won’t see any “broom” to sweep. You will burst out in negativity which may destroy your marriage.
6) GUARD YOUR HEART: Guard your heart jealously; don’t ever give room for negative thinking toward your beloved spouse. You need to fight it out deliberately, win over the power of negativity and think positively about your spouse.
Get my book titled THINK YOUR WAY TO A BETTER MARRIAGE to know how to overcome the power of negativity and use positivity to heal and keep your home.
7) BUILD AND STRENGTHEN TRUST: Use every opportunity to build and maintain trust. Trust is the foundation of love; love is the mother of marriage. When trust is lost, love is lost. When love is lost, marriage is damaged. Build trust by being open, honest, loyal, predictable, and affectionate to your spouse.
8) TALK MORE: Communication starts a marriage, it keeps It going. Dead communication is the foundation of divorce. Be in control of your communication, make it effective, and be deliberate about it. Talk intimately, not angrily. Talk to each other, not at each other.
9) LISTEN MORE: Don’t just talk to your spouse, make it your habit to listen to him or her. You will need a copy of my book titled TALK YOUR WAY TO A BETTER MARRIAGE to know how to talk and listen effectively in your marriage.
10) BE DELIBERATE: Don’t leave your marriage to the element. Don’t set your marriage in auto mode. Be deliberate to grow it; be deliberate in romancing your spouse; be deliberate in communication, play, and sexual pleasure in your marriage.
11) BE WATCHFUL: Be watchful, the devil is not happy with a joyful home. He hates it and he can use anything and anybody to destroy it. Do not allow the enemy to use your spouse, people around you, money, in-laws, attitude, carelessness, job, complacency, poverty, or prosperity to destroy your home; be watchful.
12) BE FAITHFUL: Not being faithful can destroy any marriage quickly that it will be as if they never married. Be faithful to each other; you can’t hide infidelity for too long. In 2007, a married couple divorced after realizing they were cheating on each other in an online chat room. Funny? That is how unfaithfulness can make one look. Be faithful to each other sexually and financially. Also, never do or say what your spouse must not hear or know that can destroy peace in your home.
13) SURPRISE EACH OTHER: Do many things to surprise each other. Give surprise gifts, surprise kisses, surprise date nights, surprise romantic getaways, etc. Compete to outdo each other in surprises.
14) DON’T TAKE EACH OTHER FOR GRANTED: Be careful, don’t take each other for granted. Closeness and intimacy have one weakness. They make us get used to each other, thus, taking each other for granted. Before you got married, you didn’t take your mate for granted. You did everything to impress each other in high regard. This can stop easily if you don’t work on it. To avoid taking each other for granted, always imagine yourself trying to make your spouse marry you and work harder to keep him or her.
15) HAVE MORE SEX: Don’t get tired of making love in your marriage. Spice it up; don’t be tired of having sex with each other; don’t allow routine to take over in your bedroom. Look forward to having sex with your spouse. Think about it, talk about it, make it fun, make it a banquet, plan about it, dress for it, wait for it when your spouse is not at home, do it again and again when he or she comes back.
If you allow your sex life to degenerate, it is most likely you are going to lose the bliss in your marriage.
