This is my third post in a series about marriage (well really, just about my marriage). The first post addressed Why I Still Believe in Marriage and yesterday’s post was Part 1 of 5 Keys to Grow a Happy Marriage. In today’s post I’m sharing 5 additional keys for a strong, healthy, happy and thriving marriage.

Marriage was not meant to make you happy:  I know that probably sounds like a contradiction to the theme of this blog post, but stay with me. If you go back to Genesis and you read about the first married couple, Adam and Eve, nowhere do you see that their union was created to make the other happy. They were joined for companionship, to be a help and support to each other, to raise a family, but “happiness” is not on the list! Now, I do believe that God wants us to be happy in marriage, but it first starts with being “happy” (solid, sold-out, & secure) in our relationship with God and being “happy”  (solid, secure, & satisfied)” with ourself. I truly believe that the ultimate goal for marriage is to make us holy, not happy. Once I realized that my husband was not responsible for my personal happiness, I stopped putting so much pressure on him to perform to my liking (which made him a lot happier). But it also meant, though, that I had to deal with my own “stuff” and stop blaming him for my unhappiness.

Become bilingual:  If you haven’t read The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman, stop reading this and go order that book! Seriously! Each of us has a unique way that we express and receive love. Learning the “love language” of your spouse will greatly improve the quality & happiness factor of your marriage. My primary language is “Acts of Service,” – that’s how I receive love and so that’s how I was displaying it in my marriage. I was constantly doing things for my husband as an expression of my love to him. The only problem is, his love language is “Quality Time.”  So, while he appreciated the things that I did for him, he really would have traded all that in for me just spending quality time with him. So we spent many frustrated years not understanding how the other really needed to be loved.  Now, I’m able to speak his language and he is able to speak mine – we have become bilingual.

Clean your plate slate each morning:  A marriage cannot thrive if one, or both spouses, is constantly keeping record of past wrongs. Once an issue has been resolved, then let it go. Start fresh.  Clean the slate each day.  There is nothing worse than walking under the cloud of the mistakes you made yesterday. It is impossible to grow your marriage when love is being choke out by the unrelenting hands of unforgiveness. There is a great quote that says “Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast” (Marlene Dietrich). OUCH!

Invoke the Midas Touch:  Remember the childhood story about King Midas?  He was granted a wish where everything he touched turned to gold. While that didn’t work out too well for him, it could definitely work in your favor in marriage.  All of us crave human touch and there is no touch that we crave more than that of our spouse. Keep touch and intimacy as a priority in your marriage. Hold hands, exchange massages, give bear hugs. Did you know that the act of embracing floods our bodies with oxytocin, a “bonding hormone” that actually makes people feel secure and trusting toward each other, lowers cortisol levels, and reduces stress? Now, who wouldn’t want to grant that to their spouse? If you have been going through a rough spot and need a place to start, try hugging each other for 2 minutes each day. At first it may seem like the longest 2 minutes in your life, but pretty soon you won’t be able to make it through 2 minutes for other reasons.  😉

Pour love into pain:  If we look at the example of Christ, His death on the cross was the ultimate example of love being poured out as a remedy to the pain & hurt of the world. There will be trials and tribulations in our marriages, that’s just a fact. When those seasons come, our response needs to be to pour the love of Christ into that painful place. As someone who has had to walk this out ( in other words, I’m not speaking to you philosophically but rather experientially), I can tell you that it is the most courageous thing that you can do for your marriage. It is also one of the most healing and relationship shifting acts that you can take. Just remember, LOVE ALWAYS WINS.

What are your keys to a happy marriage? What else would you add to the list? Please share in the comments!