No matter how well you think you have prepared. Books you have read or advice you have been given. There will always be new things for you to learn in marriage. Marriage lessons to learn, some the hard way, but necessary for you to have a long and healthy marriage.
Marriage changes, grows, challenges, and stretches you in ways nothing else can. The longer you are married the more you experience. One thing that has helped me the most throughout my marriage is being surrounded by other married couples. Other couples have shared with us marriage tips, tools, and lessons they have learned and used.
As I look back over the last 15 years of being married to my husband, Eric, and even before when we were dating in college. There have been so many ups and downs as we matured into adulthood and grew in marriage.
I am truly in awe of how far we have come, how much we have grown, and how much God has done in and through us. While looking back, I recognize that there have been some lessons that have helped us the most.
Lessons that should be shared with others. So I am going to share with you 15 marriage lessons I have learned in the last 15 years of marriage. Lessons we all can use to help us have marriages that last a lifetime.
1. Love is an action you have to take daily.
Most get married so in love. There is so much emotion experienced and expressed. Yet, over time as I grew as a woman, as a wife, and in my faith, I realized that love is not an emotion at all.
Love is an action that we have to choose to express daily. As a wife, you have to choose to love and show your husband love daily. Even when he is not acting so loveable or showing you love in return.
2. Nothing stays the same.
No matter how much you want things to stay the same, they will not. You will change, your husband will change, and your marriage will also change over time. Some changes we embrace while others we resist.
TO EVERYTHING there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven,
Ecclesiastes 3:1 (AMPC)
Making it important in marriage to continue to be intentional about staying connected to your husband. Staying connected with your husband will help you both to see the changes occurring and adapt together. While staying committed to going through the season of life together and growing together along the way.
3. God cannot be at the center of your marriage if He is not at the center of your life.
Having a God-centered marriage may be the goal, yet it is impossible if you and your husband do not have God-centered lives. Your individual faith and relationship with God will reflect in your marriage. So it has to start with you.
Then as you seek God and see Him working in and through your life. You will also start to work in and through your marriage. A marriage lesson we all want to learn.
4. You need to be the biggest cheerleaders & supporter of each other.
Everyone will not be for you or want the best for you at times, including family and friends. So it is important when married if no one else is there to encourage your husband, you should, and vice versa.
So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NLT)
Life is filled with so many ups and downs. Making it important that through them all, you have your husband there who will both celebrate the wins and help you through the downs.
5. Your marriage will not grow if you don’t.
We know change is inevitable, but there are some changes that we have to be intentional about making. Especially as a wife, you have to be intentional about putting the work within yourself so you are equipped to put in the work in your marriage.
A strong and healthy marriage requires two strong and healthy people committed to putting in the work and helping it grow. Therefore making sure you are putting in the work so you are physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy as you can be is a must for a healthy, strong, and growing marriage.
6. Learn to celebrate the small wins.
It is so easy for us to focus and want to celebrate just the big wins or big milestones met. Yet, those are often far and few in between. Therefore it is important in marriage that we shine a light on and find ways to celebrate the small wins.
There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and make himself enjoy good in his labor. Even this, I have seen, is from the hand of God.
Ecclesiastes 2:24 (AMPC)
The things that actually keep us going through the day and through the hard times. The things can often feel minor, but without them, we cannot get to the big wins. Just like with a milestone anniversary like my 15th, it would have been impossible without the 2nd or the 6th.
So remembering not to despise or dismiss the small things and wins in marriage is a must.
7. It takes a village to have a healthy & long-lasting marriage.
Now, although you, your husband, and God should be the only ones in your marriage. That does not mean you do not need other people to help you in your journey. You need other people to help encourage you, pray with and for you, and to share with your the marriage lessons they have learned.
That village should include friends you both have as individuals and couples. Other people that are also committed to having healthy and long-lasting marriages.
8. Good communication is a skill that you never stop working on.
No matter how long you have known each other or have been married, communicating well with each other takes work. It takes being mindful of what we say and intentional about listening.
Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.
Colossians 4:6 (MSG)
Just as we grow and change, so should how we communicate in our marriage. Making it important to continuously find ways to ensure we have good and healthy communication.
9. Loving yourself better helps you to love your husband better.
This marriage lesson goes hand in hand with lesson #5 and is especially important for us wives. As a wife, you often wear many hats and have so many to-dos on your daily list. While trying to get everything done and take care of everyone else, we often do not take the time to take care of ourselves.
We have all heard the saying ‘You cannot pour from an empty cup’. So making sure your cup is filled is actually one of the best things you can do for your husband and your marriage. It is hard to show love when you have nothing to give. So the things you do, by practicing self-care, to help fill your cup will help you to show your husband the love he needs.
10. Forgiveness is a decision & a journey.
Marriage, like life, is filled with many missteps and we will make many mistakes. We will do or say things, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that we will need to be forgiven for and so will our husbands.
And become useful and helpful and kind to one another, tenderhearted (compassionate, understanding, loving-hearted), forgiving one another [readily and freely], as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32 (AMPC)
In marriage, deciding to forgive is a decision you can make in a moment. However, working through the emotions and building back trust is a journey. A journey that takes both you and your husband committed to putting in the work necessary.
11. A praying wife is a powerful wife.
With the need for two people in a marriage to be committed to making work, it can be easy to feel there is nothing you can do alone to change your marriage. Yet, seeking God in prayer for yourself as a wife, for your husband, and for your marriage is the one thing you can do that is guaranteed to change your marriage.
There is so much God can reveal to you in prayer that will help you as a wife and your marriage. There is so much God can do in and through your marriage if you would just seek His ways and not your own. Making is essential as a wife to utilize the power you already have. A marriage lesson we all need to hold onto.
12. Giving grace is essential, both to yourself & your husband.
This marriage lesson goes hand in hand with lesson #10. There are times when forgiveness is needed, but more often than not we just need to give a little more grace. Grace upon grace.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
1 Corinthians 13:4-6 (ESV)
We are all far from perfect. Things will go undone, mistakes will be made, and feelings will get hurt. So instead of getting down on ourselves or holding things against our husband, giving grace is a must.
13. A praying couple in an unstoppable couple.
If a praying wife is a powerful wife, how much more so would a praying couple be. Taking time to pray as a couple is one of the most game-changing and intimate things you can do in your marriage.
Praying as a couple opens the opportunity for you to hear what is on your respective hearts. It helps you both to grow together and in your relationship with God. While also giving you opportunities to learn things that you can pray for your husband about when you are praying alone.
14. Nothing grows & strengthens your marriage like the hard times.
While I would love to say that the good times bring you together and strengthen you the most, however, I have found the opposite to be true.
Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
1 Corinthians 13:7 (AMPC)
The obstacles you face together help to strengthen your unity. Moreover, the failures you face together help to teach you that you can overcome anything together. Lastly, the storms you face together help you to remember that you can only overcome it all with God’s help.
15. Marriage should be fun.
Yes, marriage takes work, commitment, intention, and a hundred other things to make it work. Yet, one of the best marriage lessons I have learned, I try to live out every day, and make sure to share with anyone is that marriage should be FUN.
While there will be times and seasons that are hard and seeing the fun in marriage may not be easy. It still can be. So seeking ways to have fun along this marriage journey is a must. A journey filled with many lessons learned and many memories made.
I’d love to know how long you have been married and what is one marriage lesson you have learned in the comments!
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