Marriage: Now Is the Time

In today’s fast paced world we quite often forget to take care of ourselves, not only physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. All three of these areas have a huge impact on our relationships with our spouse. The tried and true answer to resolving these issues is time.

Time can be our friend or our enemy. If we ignore the passage of time thinking that we’ll get to those issues later we will find that later, like tomorrow, never comes. Our health, physical, emotional, and spiritual health needs to be a priority. If we think about the time we spend preparing for a career and in performing in that career we can be astounded by how much effort we put into it.

Now just think about your physical health. How much time and effort do you put into that? For some of us health issues have made us more conscious of what is needed to stay fit but just look at the national averages for overweight and obese people. The figures are shocking. And even more shocking are the rates of divorce in our society today. These are proof of the fact that we let our spiritual and emotional health issues run unchecked and unattended.

Time is the answer. This is a fact, it takes time to become emotionally ill in your relationship and it will take time and effort to heal those relationships. Again it is a matter of setting priorities. Ask yourself why it is you work so hard at your job, for a great many it is to support their family. Yet if they are not working just as hard at making their families strong and healthy then all the monetary wealth will have no impact at all except to create bigger problems in the divorce.

The time needed does not have to come in big bunches, in fact in the big picture the little bits of time spent on a consistent basis are more effective than the big chunks all at once. Little things like saying good-bye before you go and giving an approximate time when you will be back. And if you can’t make that then the little time spent in making a call to say you’ll be late. A brief moment spent daily in hugging and saying I love you reaps rewards for a long time after.

Time scheduled for each other as “our time” is wonderful relationship medicine. This is a time when each of your know that you have the others undivided attention to discuss daily problems, situations and schedules. To talk about plans for future dates and holidays. To tell each other about your day, week, month, year and life. Discuss the things that are bothering you, things that make you happy, things that are going wonderfully and things that are not. Let each other know about your hopes and fears, about your dreams for the future and each other.

Time means caring when shopping for a gift or making a surprise date for each other. Time spend in taking care of your share and more of the household chores can say so much more about how much you love and care for each other than your words. All of these require little amounts of your time but large amounts of your heart and thoughts and this tells the other that you do care.

The time for doing these things is all the time, right now, in fact, you should have started during courtship. If there have been lapses in these types of behaviors and some emotional spam has intruded into your relationship then the time to rectify it is now, immediately. But know this that it will take almost as much, if not even more, time to fix the issue as it did to create it.

A hero is not one who does the major thing once in a long time; a hero goes about daily doing the little things that make everything run smoothly.

It’s your time so use it wisely.

Dallas Munkholm, B.A., B.Com., R.P.C.
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine