On Marriage

Or, how to quarrel and make up conveniently

Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I’m afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.

-C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

C. S. Lewis, one of my very favorite writers,¹ hits upon a truth here with his wry humor, tucked into the last page of one of his excellent children’s books. Yes, it is very convenient to quarrel with our spouses. Creating a home and building a family together comes with ever so many opportunities to disagree and, yes, even fight, with each other.

But what is also true?

It is also very convenient to reconcile with each other.

That person that sleeps next to you? It is convenient (although admittedly not always easy!) to “make-up” with a spouse. We eat together, we cook together, we do home repairs together (too much of that lately in our house), we parent together, we read aloud together, we go to church together, we go on walks together. We spend many hours together every week. Opportunities for showing love abound.

Nearly two decades in to my own marriage (our 19th anniversary was February 25), I see that complacency and criticism, the opposite of attention and adoration, slowly creep in, imperceptibly, like a western diamondback rattlesnake in the leaf litter. We don’t even notice the snake of criticism until we are nearly stepping on it, the subtle rattle warning us of the danger ahead.

I remember early on in our relationship, that hazy, blissful time of early love, set to the soundtrack of Harry Connick, Jr’s album Blue Light, Red Light—I didn’t know it at the time, but I was overlooking his faults. I forgave quickly. This wasn’t ground-breaking or unique to our relationship: these are the hallmarks of early love.

Early love forgives quickly. Early love adores and admires.

How can I recapture some glimmers of that early-marriage love?

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The two questions we ask each other every week

It’s embarrassing to admit this, but just this January, my husband and I started having weekly marriage check-ins. Why did it take us nearly 19 years to decide to do this? For one, early on in our marriage, we didn’t really need to schedule a time to talk; when we weren’t at school or working, we were together. Together was our default mode, and it was a simple & sweet period of our lives.

Five years into marriage, our first baby was born. Having a baby is like breaking up a puzzle, throwing the pieces everywhere, and then, when you finally sit down to put the pieces back together, you realize that the picture has changed. Our attention was no longer directed towards each other, but was now turned outwards towards this tiny, perfect human we had created. (I am sometimes asked which baby was the hardest; number 3? or maybe number 5 or 6? My answer, without hesitation, is always, the first baby you have. Nothing alters your life as drastically as the first one.)

Fast-forward 14 years & five more babies, and life is about as simple as running a busy restaurant during the lunch rush. In fact, I feel like I’m running an actual restaurant most days. (Thankfully my older kids cook a lot of our breakfasts). Scheduling time to talk about how our relationship is working (or not working) is a necessity at this point. So once a week, usually on Sunday evenings, we sit down with a beautiful dark blue spiral notebook, and ask each other these two questions:

1. How did you feel loved by me last week?

2. What can I do to help you feel loved in the coming week?

It’s simple, and can last just a few minutes, or much longer if we aren’t exhausted and/or have a lot to say. We’re still quite new at this, and I’m sure we will get better at it with practice, but I think it will help us to recapture some of that early-marriage love that can be elusive in the day-to-day grind of life.

I hope that, in the next 19 years of my marriage, I will be slower to quarrel with my husband, but much quicker to make up when we (inevitably) do. (Thanks, Jack, for the prompt.)

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Do you have regular marriage check-ins? If so, what questions do you ask each other?

1. Current favorite authors: Lewis, Dickens, & Austen