How to Plan Your Marriage Future

Priorities. We all think to some degree we prioritize well. We work countless hours to give our families more. We chase the kids in everything they want to do. We call our parents and siblings on occasion to say hi and we miss them. And we pat our wives on the backside as they walk out the door as a way of telling them we still find them attractive. We give everyone in our lives a small token of our love, but no one really gets our full attention. We have so many things distracting us. Chores. Work. Practice. Bills. Health issues. This list can go on and on, and everyone has a similar list. It is no wonder that the divorce rate has risen to such a ridiculous level. We, as married couples, show we care about everything but our spouse. We give a piece of ourselves to everyone and the leftovers go to our significant other.

How do we change this trend?

The answer is: we must truly prioritize our life. 

Stephanie and I just went through a Life Plan with our friends and mentors Greg and Julie Gorman. This was so eye opening as we sat and answered questions for some 16 hours. There were times the questions didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. However, with each layer of questioning we grew closer and closer to mapping out what we really wanted out of life and developing a plan to get there. What they were helping us do was look for consistencies in our answers that gave them clues to what we truly held as important. The answer: family and us. The us ,to be more clear, is Stephanie and I. We learned we were just better together. Plain and simple for things to be clicking on all cylinders we had to make sure our personal time was well maintained. If we were to be better together, then we needed to make time to be together.

How do we have this valuable commodity of time together in a life that is so crazy? Between the ups and downs that you have throughout the year it so simple to allow those times to push back our time together and listen to the lie, "We will do it later." This is the deception.  We deceive ourselves into thinking our marriage will get better just because we continue to exist together. However, this is exactly why divorce takes place. Both people continue to grow but without a common destination, they grow apart instead of together.

What can we do to avoid this commonality and start living intentionally towards a future together.

1. Intentionally schedule time together.

Some people are pretty good at scheduling time and living off the calendar. Well, some people think they are. If time together isn't written on the calendar and executed just like your child's practice, taking the car to the shop, or even going to work the next day, something will fill that place on the calendar where our marriages should be growing but instead are dying. Dying so slowly that we don't even realize it's dead until it's been buried a year. 

     2. Stick to the calendar. 

We have to stick to the calendar in the same way as we would if it was our child's game night. There are very few people who would take their child to practice 5 nights the week before the game and then not show up to the game. Our marriage should be no different. We should have scheduled marriage practice and game nights scheduled as well. And I mean scheduled in our calendars. 

    3. Attend practice. 

Once "practice time" is scheduled on our calendars we need to show up for practice. Stephanie and I have practice times throughout our calendar. One night we are practicing personal growth, another night spiritual growth, and yet another for how we can develop a financial growth plan. There are more but you get the idea. These things may seem not very exciting but when was the last time you attended a practice that was exciting? Practice is to develop timing and cohesiveness, work on communication skills and ultimately create team unity. Team unity enables us to  perform at our best on game night. In marriage, it is no different. 

4. Play like you practice. 

If we have practiced well, the game will take care of itself. Whether game night is going to dinner and a movie, a ball game, museum or just sitting on the back porch drinking a cup of coffee, how we play the game will be directly determined by the quality preparation we put in before the game. Since we have discussed throughout the week many of the things that distract us- like the budget, how to get the kids to and from practice while taking care of our other commitments,- we are able to enjoy game night to the fullest. We have practiced well so we intend on playing well.

There is truly no excuse for people to grow apart. The reason we grow apart is we never intentionally grew together in the first place.

Take time. Sit down. Plan your marriage future.