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marriage

Something no counselor tells you about marriage.

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Marriage

I wish you could take your honeymoon 10 years after you’ve been married instead of 10 minutes after you’ve been married.

When you first get married you don’t know how to vacation together. You’re amateurs at this whole “doing life together” thing. On my honeymoon for instance, I decided to spend four hours winning a ping pong tournament. Why? Because I’m an idiot and didn’t know that one of Jenny’s love languages was “Spending quality time together.” I swore that her love language was “My husband winning a ping pong tournament at a Sandals resort.”

The vacations we take now are so much better than the ones we took 13 years ago.

But despite what we’ve learned about each other and our relationship, there’s one marital crisis no counselor prepared us for. Despite our best attempts at oneness and leaving and cleaving and every other phrase associated with marriage, there was something we were not ready for…

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Calling your wife your “bride.”

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I’m going to lose readers on this one. Even as I start writing this post, I can hear metaphorical car doors slamming shut and tires peeling away from SCL into the vast blogosphere in search of better posts to read. But I have to make a confession, and I can’t hold it back any more.

It weirds me out a little when a guy refers to his wife as his “bride.”

Unless it’s your wedding day, telling me, “I need to go see my bride,” sounds a little strange to me. If it’s your big day and you’re about to go down the aisle, bride it up. Say bride all day long like it was your J.O.B. Go bride wild. I’ll even get in on the action and say things like, “Your bride looks beautiful today.” Or “It’s going to be amazing for you to see your bride walk down the aisle!” I’m 100% down for calling your wife “bride” on the day you get married.

The day after your wedding? I’m not so sure. Here’s why:

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Creating your own "Love Languages."

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The book “The 5 Love Languages,” is probably one of the best selling marriage books of all time. By Christian Law, you can’t go through pre-marital counseling without reading this book. In it, Gary Chapman writes that we all express and receive love in one of five ways, “Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch.” For example, I like to receive words of affirmation. My wife likes to receive acts of service. I like when she tells me I’m awesome. She likes when I mop the kitchen floor. This one insight took us approximately 3 years of marriage to figure out.

Love Languages is a great book, but recently I realized I was doing my own remix of it. My wife and I have started to add our own love languages to Chapman’s list. In fact I’ve come up with 5 new ones. And I promise you’ll never guess the first one…

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The scared straight marriage speech.

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A few weeks ago at church, my pastor Andy Stanley shared one of his parenting techniques. He didn’t say it was for everyone. He didn’t say it was perfect. He wasn’t really recommending it, but it still sounded good to me.

When Andy finds a mess somewhere in his house, he calls his kids to the room. Instead of telling them to clean up or fix everything, he says something like this:

“Please ask me to clean up this room for you. Please tell me, ‘Dad, I’ve created a mess that I’d like you to clean up.’ Or you can call your mom and ask her.”

Instantly, his kids get the point and understand what he’s telling them. When they create a mess they act like it doesn’t impact anyone else, so he does his best to show how their actions have consequence for everyone in the house. And a few days ago I tried this technique with my own kids to some less than stellar results.

My kids had made our playroom, or ‘dining room we can’t dine in,’ a disaster. It was hard to tell exactly what happened but I think the American Girl Dolls got into some sort of turf war with the Bitty Twins. There were doll shoes and purses and barrettes everywhere. Real street fight. I could have CSI’d the scene and figured out what happened, but it didn’t matter. I needed my kids to clean it up.

So I called in my 6 year old daughter L.E. and my 4 year old daughter McRae. I sat them down, explained to them that I wanted them to ask me to clean up their mess for them and then I waited.

L.E. looked at her sister with a face that said, “Crae, is this really happening? Is dad volunteering to clean up after us? This is fantastic.” Then she looked at me and said, “OK, dad, will you clean up our mess?” Then my wife laughed out loud.

It didn’t work. My kids weren’t phased by it. There were happy to let me clean up after them. My scared straight tactic didn’t work. It failed. But that’s OK because I know a scared straight tactic that always works and so do you – the “marriage is difficult” tactic.

It’s almost Christian law that a minister must give you the “scared straight marriage speech” during your wedding. Usually crammed between the opening comments and the repeat after me statements and hopefully not a pastor sex joke, the scared straight marriage speech is pretty simple. Here are the pieces:

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