Turn Towards Each Other Every Day

Every marriage needs nurturing, love and friendship for survival. Marriage is essential to God’s plan of happiness and keeping and maintaining a marriage relationship takes daily work and effort. Here are some ways to turn towards your spouse on a daily basis as found in, Successful Marriages and Families, Proclamation Principles and Research perspectives. “Get in sync with your partner’s love preferences. Find out how your partner likes to receive love and do those things often,” (Duncan, Zasukha, CH 3)

1. Everyday your spouse will reach out to you with some type of bid for affection, how you respond is crucial to their feeling of being loved and nurtured. Does their bid warrant laughter, concern or an action on your part? Be aware and respond the way you would want to be responded to.

2. How many things can you think of that you do every single day? There are multiple activities that we must do and want to do on a daily basis. Pick a couple of those activities and make a special effort to include your spouse in the activity. Some suggestions include; making the bed, reading together, watching a TV show, doing the dishes, a daily phone call just to talk, making a meal, etc.

3. Stress can build and escalate throughout the day and everyone needs someone to talk to. Be that person for your spouse. Make it a priority to sit with your spouse at the end of the day and talk about how the day went. The most important part of this may not be what is said but how the other person responds. Listen and validate one another with love and tenderness.

4. Let your spouse know that you love and appreciate them every single day with positive communication of love and affection. It is important to know their love preferences to be able to communicate to them clearly.

5. Do not get into the doldrums with your efforts. Take note of what things are working and if you are truly connecting every day. Make changes when needed and keep things real and alive by making enhancements to your daily nurturing, loving and friend shipping of one another.

 My personal favorite advice from the chapter was to talk as friends. Don’t always make our conversations about jobs, kids and problems. Journey back to the conversations that made you fall in love in the beginning. I love this advice. I think when we think of friends we journey outside of our relationship and look for others to be “friends” with to talk to as “friends”. Wouldn’t it be great to have that separate friend connection with the person in your life that you love the most?