How to maintain a lasting friendship with your spouse, Vol.3

Before I launch into part three of the top three ways to maintain an ass-kicking friendship in marriage, I want to give you a question to continue to ask. This question not only applies in a profound way to marriage, but I believe to every aspect of a well lived life. That question is, “how good can this get? “ In fact, if our goal is not to live a well lived life then we are really wasting our one and only opportunity to find out how good our life could have been. I’d really encourage you to sit down with your spouse or partner and decide what you are collectively shooting for… I believe that a well lived should be the goal all the way around. And if you believe in your case that that a well lived marriage is not possible, I’d love to hear why you think so.

The reason that I pose this question today is that it has a tremendous application to the third pathway to a fantastic friendship with your spouse. So if number one was a deep and abiding mutual respect for one another, and number two would be time and presence…. Number three would be….us-ness.

What? What is us-ness? It is simply the connective tissue that we build (or fail to build) each day of our lives together. Our human bodies depend on connective tissue; ligaments, tendons, cartilage, muscles, and blood vessels; to not only enable us to move effectively, but also to hold us together. Every day we have the opportunity to build the same connective tissue in our marriages; shared activities, family and friends, similar goals and values, and offering one another comfort and connection in creative and loving ways.

I want to call your attention to the last two elements I mentioned in the previous paragraph…comfort and connection. Any time that you seize an opportunity to offer the other comfort and connection ; affection, playfulness, touch, quality time, etc. , you add us-ness to your relationship. And every time you add us-ness you take a huge leap forward in answering the questions, “how good can this relationship get?”

Mutual respect, time and attention, us-ness… if you’re willing to invest in these three aspects of your relationship, you will find out very quickly how good it can get!