Live Like You’re Dating
Think for a moment about the early days of dating. A new relationship is fresh, vibrant, and exciting. Your heart races as you receive a new text message.
Dating has a lot of fun physiological responses. Euphoria, a racing heart, sweating palms. It’s fun to just think about it!
Marriage is quite different. You don’t experience those same responses as frequently, so you start to wonder if you’re no longer in love. Marriage is a marathon, while dating is a sprint. They’re different.
But just because you’re married doesn’t mean you can’t live like you’re dating.
Marriage’s permanence removes lots of uncertainty about the future. You don’t have to worry about breaking up or hiding who you really are. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t bring an air of excitement to your daly life.
Here are a few ideas for how you can put the fun in fundamental marriage.
• Date nights. If you’re not still going out on dates with your wife, you’re doing it wrong. There are exceptions to every rule, but you need to be still having experiences and rediscovering each other on a regular basis. You are two people who are changing daily. By setting aside alone time, you can get to know each other better on a regular basis.
• Surprises. Who doesn’t like surprises? I wrote about this recently in my article called “Little Surprises.” Basically, you can add excitement into your wife’s life by surprising her with small tokens or mementos.
• New experiences. You and your wife should try something you’ve never tried before. Even if you think you may not like it, give it a go! If nothing else, you might have something funny to look back on.
The married life is a long ride, so make sure it doesn’t get stale!
Planning Margin Time
Think of the most successful people that you know. Consider what they do, their characteristics and all of the many obligations that they have. They’re pretty busy, aren’t they? The most successful people in life have a lot on their plate and they still get it all done. How do they do it? Disciplined time management.
I love to experiment with time management techniques. I usually have several different projects that I’m working on simultaneously. It’s difficult to manage, but I learned a difficult lesson early on. I learned that if I don’t plan margin time, I can never stay on track. All of the apps and day planners in the world can’t save me if I don’t give myself some margin.
Tasks that get scheduled get done. By using detailed planning, you can budget your time and get more things accomplished. The problem is that you can take planning too far. If you plan every minute without any breathing room, you’ll fail. There needs to be some time in between tasks that lets you handle those things that pop up.
Margin time gives you the flexibility that you need to adapt, while still allowing you to finish your goals. It gives you permission to relax a little bit and do other things. You could use your margin time with your wife, your kids, or even a hobby. For me, I give myself several hours of margin time on the weekends, while my weekdays are much tighter. In my evening routine, I’ve budgeted 15-20 minutes of margin time to spend on whatever Alison needs me to do.
The reason that using margin time is so effective is because it admits reality. I can’t go from working on my computer one minute to driving to my next destination a minute later. It takes time to move between tasks.
Margin time gives us the space we need in our day to do other things that we love. It allows us to be successful because it admits that not every moment can be planned.
Celebrate Achievements
Life is a scoreboard. We set goals and then measure our progress against them. While this goal-setting process can be ruthless in the workplace, it’s difficult to make it through life without a couple of big wins. But sometimes going too far in your celebrations can overshadow the accomplishment.
For the past three years, I’ve been on a mission to be debt-free. I started it as a single person and now am working on it with Alison. To her credit, she turned me on to it.
The first time I paid off a credit card in full, I felt good. I mean really good. I wanted to celebrate! This was the first step towards a success on a difficult journey. The problem was I celebrated that success by going out to eat… read “spending money.”
It didn’t set me back very much, but it did set me back. Was that the right way to celebrate becoming debt free? No.
You and your wife will be presented many occasions for celebrating huge accomplishments. Alison will be graduating from Medical School soon. After many, MANY years of schooling, she’ll finally be a Doctor. While I’d love to celebrate this huge accomplishment with a trip to Europe or a nice spending spree, that would get in the way of our journey to no debt. So the trip to Europe will have to wait.
The key to celebration is to do it in moderation. This is especially important if your accomplishment has come at the expense of another, like you winning a promotion over a colleague. In this case, you must be especially gracious in your victory.
If you’re celebrating a new weight loss goal, the appropriate response is not to go eat an ice cream cake.
You didn’t reach this milestone on your own. No matter what we do, we’re often only successful because of the help of others. Be grateful to those who helped get you here and be sure to take time to thank God.
Every good accomplishment deserves to be recognized. Make sure your celebrations are proportionate.
Supporting Your Wife’s Goals
In the past, I’ve written about personal goal setting. What about helping your wife when she’s got a goal set for herself?
I know from experience that when Alison is supportive of my goals, I can usually get them done. The Transition would never have happened if Alison didn’t affirm me and help extensively with the editing. Instead of just having her on the sidelines of my goals, I’ve actively worked to involve her in them.
At the same time, she’s got goals that she wants to hit. In those circumstances, I want to be the support she needs to get to where she wants to go.
Much like you, your wife needs you as an accountability partner. Alison keeps me on task for writing content for the blog, and in that way she holds me accountable. We need to be firm, yet loving, and hold our wives accountable to their goals. That is, of course, only if you have her permission to do so.
Your wife wants your support. We know that goals without support are dreams. They’re never going to happen, and if they do, it takes tremendous work. In the same way that you want her on board and fired up about what you’re doing, be that fire for her.
Supporting her goals has its benefits. Achieving her goals will bring her satisfaction and happiness. A happier wife means that your marriage is going to be that much better. This isn’t all about you, but let’s not pretend like we don’t benefit from her success.
Here’s how you can be the best supporter possible:
• You’re a coach, not a nag. No one likes to be nagged. So be a firm coach who cuts through excuses, but understand that there’s a limit. Don’t cross the line, but don’t let her quit, either.
• Take on some of her chores so she can hit her goal. Time is the biggest component in goal setting. When we set a goal, we take on another task, but usually don’t let go of one. Find ways to adjust your schedule or routine to help her do what she needs to do. For example, I watch Benedict so Alison can go to the gym. It takes a small adjustment in my schedule and gives Alison the freedom that she needs.
• Don’t interfere. Much like Lent, it’s not nice to taunt your wife with something she is intentionally giving up. If your wife is on a diet, you’d better not be eating doughnuts around her. If she’s writing the next great American novel, don’t hog the computer. Be sensitive to her path and steer clear!
Supporting your wife is one of your primary duties as a husband.
Why You Don’t Pray with Her
You don’t make the time.
It isn’t a priority.
You’ve never asked.
You’ve never done it before.
No one taught you.
You don’t know where to start.
You’re scared.
Today’s the day to start.
Ponder Your Mistakes
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. It’s a fatal character flaw that is regularly found in men. Certainly women can be guilty of the sin of pride, but it seems to almost be ingrained in the male psyche. Pride blinds us to our shortcomings, robbing us of our chance to become a better person.
I’m really bad about dwelling on my past mistakes. It seems like it’s easier for me to remember all of the wrong things I’ve done in the past, as opposed to many of the wonderful experiences I’ve been able to have. For a long time, I’d try to change the subject. I would focus on something else and hope that the bad memories would go away. What I didn’t realize was that considering my past mistakes, especially my past sins, can be an extraordinary tool in the spiritual and married life.
You’re not the boy you used to be. You’re a man. It’s ok to recognize that you haven’t always made the right choices and sometimes, you couldn’t have been more wrong. Perfect is a myth. In fact, it’s a lie. It’s literally impossible for you to be perfect. As a human, you are, by definition, imperfect. Trying to be perfect is trying to make yourself God. Not going to happen.
The past is an excellent teacher, not a best friend. The past is for learning, for understanding, and for course correction. It’s more of a lighthouse than a ship. When you dwell on the past, you miss the present and that’s a real shame.
It seems that there’s a balance that needs to be struck. We have to spend enough time contemplating our past mistakes to learn valuable lessons, but not so long that we become obsessive about them. Pondering your mistakes have some real tangible benefits.
• It can show you God’s capacity for love. We’ve all done some serious sinning. If we were put in God’s position, we wouldn’t forgive, let alone forget, our egregious transgressions. And there’s the beauty. We can sit there in awe of God’s great love and mercy.
• It can show you God’s role in your life. When we conquer sin, it’s easy to start to think that we did it on our own. We might even get a bit prideful (see what I did there?) and taunt the Devil. That never works. When we know the sin we were in and see what our life is like free from it, it makes it transparently clear that God is actively involved in our lives.
• It makes our flaws transparent. When you’re overweight, you can’t hide it in the mirror. After all, you can only hold in your breath for so long. An honest look at our lives can help us see where we need to learn and grow. Only a review of our lives can help us see patterns that are the symptoms of deeper problems.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. You know more than you used to. But don’t be so soft that your mistakes don’t inspire change. Strike the balance, effect change, and do it right starting today.
Reclaiming Wasted Time
Time is our most precious commodity. Like our health, once it’s gone, it’s not coming back. Yet, with so many minutes at our command, it can be dangerously easy to let seconds slip to minutes, slip to hours, slip to days without taking advantage of them.
Before Benedict was born, I had nothing but time on my hands. Alison and I would spend some time together each evening, but other than that, I was mostly free to idly let the evening hours pass me by. Then I started Catholic Husband and I had a nice activity to invest my time into. Fast forward a few months and I was writing a book. My idle hours dwindled, and I was quite happy. Today, I have a full plate of creative projects and Benedict to help care for. My wasted time has greatly diminished, but I can still waste some time if I don’t “feel” like writing or if I think I can push it off until tomorrow.
I bet we have a few wasted time activities in common. Spending hours watching TV is a waste of time. Not only are there precious few shows that are worth our time, most leave us feeling empty. We all have our guilty pleasures which, in moderation, are fine. But sitting and watching reality TV for 3 hours a day is a complete waste of time. Overusing our computers is also a waste of time. An easy way to find out if you should stop using your computer is if you find yourself staring at the screen asking yourself, “What next?” The computer is a fabulous tool and a fabulous time suck. Use it for the former. Perhaps video games are your outlet for wasted time. All of these things are fine in moderation, but are useless if used excessively.
How do we reclaim that wasted time?
• Cut your time in half. If you find that you don’t have enough time to take care of household tasks or pursue your dream, cut your wasted time activities in half. So if you spend 20 hours a week (a little more than 2 hours a day) watching TV, then see what you can do with 10 hours a week. You’ll be amazed at how much time you have to accomplish things.
• Make a list of alternative activities. If you don’t have a ready list of things to do in your newly reclaimed free time, you’ll just slide into a different time waster. Come up with some neat projects or off the wall ideas and then, when you find yourself in this newly reclaimed time, pick the thing that looks the most interesting. Your alternative activities could be reading, going for a walk, rearranging your bedroom, or even learning a new skill.
• Find your motivation. We never do anything because someone else tells us to. It may start the thought process, but we can’t follow through with any degree of success if we are doing it for someone else’s reasons. If you want to make a change, you need to admit that something is broken. Once you have your motivation, you’ll have the antidote to your urges to not change.
Time is too precious to let slip by. Make a choice today to not let your life pass by, filled only with re-runs.
Why You Always Lose
Conflict in your marriage is a certainty. You and your wife are working towards the same goals, but you may each have a different way to get there. There will be a lot of times when you’re in the wrong, but there will also be times when you’re right, but end up losing the fight anyway.
There have been several conflicts with Alison in which I felt like I was the person who was wronged. I try not to assign blame because I think it’s a waste of time and energy. Yet, even though I may have been right in the first place, I totally screwed up how I handled the situation and then I was really wrong. It really confused me as to how I could be right and wrong at the same time. I finally figured it out. It was how I managed our relationship that was taking me down the wrong path.
Conflict never feels good, but it can be more bearable if you’re not wrong. So, if you find yourself being right, here’s why you may end up feeling like the loser.
• You overreacted. People know when they’re wrong. They don’t like it when you turn it on them. Your wife probably didn’t mean to injure you, so don’t bring drama into the situation. Be calm, cool, and rational. This might require that you take a few steps back and get some perspective. If you overreact, you will hurt your wife’s feelings.
• You handled the postmortem wrong. Each conflict has a postmortem period where you reconcile and move on. If you go into it with arrogance or an “I told you so” attitude, then you will certainly be the loser. Show grace.
• You didn’t communicate clearly. I’ve found that most of Alison and I’s conflicts could be avoided if we would’ve communicated more clearly in the beginning. If you’ll take the time on projects and big decisions to clearly spell out what actions you’re taking and what you’re asking of your wife, then you might just save yourself a fight.
• You didn’t get all of the facts. We live in a busy world and ask our brains to hold a lot of information. We try to cut corners in conflict by making assumptions. But if you don’t have all of the facts, how can you make good decisions? When you assume incorrectly (which is often), you’ll hurt your wife’s feelings.
We don’t like conflict and we really don’t like losing. By handling the relationship side of a conflict better, we can work through our issues and end up with a stronger marriage on the other side.
The Benefits of Regular Confession
Every 3 months or 3,000 miles, you’re supposed to take your car in for routine maintenance. It’s a normal routine to keep your car in tip top shape. If you ignore it long enough, your car can experience bigger problems which end up costing you big money.
We regularly maintain our cars, yet we fail to regularly maintain our souls.
I was listening to “The Catholic Guy Show” on SiriusXM last year and Mark Hart (The Bible Geek) was on the show. The host, Lino, was asking Mark what his secret to an awesome marriage is. Mark replied that it was regular use of the Sacrament of Confession. For some reason, those words have stuck with me. The Church asks that the faithful go at least once a year, but that just isn’t often enough for me. I try to go every other week or at least once a month. I’m a failure and I need help. I gain the great graces that I need to get through the day from this Sacrament.
Making frequent use of the Sacrament of Confession has some real, tangible benefits.
• You can seed trends emerge. Confess the same sin enough times, you start to get the clue that you’ve got an issue. By regularly receiving the Sacrament, you take the time to reflect on your actions and determine what corrective measures are required.
• You bathe in graces. Reconciliation, like all Sacraments, is an atomic bomb of graces. These are graces not just to help you heal the hurt you’ve caused and ease the guilt you feel, they are so potent that they carry through beyond the Sacrament. They help you grow in love and help you to make better choices moving forward.
• It keeps your relationship with God in perspective. Comprehending God’s love is impossible this side of Heaven. By humbling yourself and presenting yourself in the Sacrament, you are reminded of your place in this relationship. You are the wayward son. You’re not without merit, but you’re not without faults. It’s comforting being the child in a relationship, because you know that the parent will always take care of your best interests. You’re not God, so let Him do what He does best.
If you haven’t been to confession in a while, pull out your bulletin, find out when your parish offers the Sacrament, and head on over.
The Importance of Growing Intellectually
When we’re learning to drive, our instructors teach us how to pass the test, not how to drive well. There are many things that are like that in our world. In school, we’re taught to pass the test, not master the materials. So when we finish our education, we’ve learned a set of facts, not how to pursue lifelong learning.
I’m as guilty as anyone of not reading assigned course materials. When you’re in school, everything else seems so much more fun. It’s usually fun for the moment, but I now regret not taking the time to immerse myself in the joy of studying. For the first year or two after graduating from college, I didn’t crack a book. Then, one day, I just started reading. I found myself much more satisfied after an hour of reading than after an hour of watching TV or surfing the internet. There’s a sense of joy in learning something new and it underscores how we can let life pass us by if we’re not lifelong learners.
Once you finish your formal education, how you grow as a person is based totally on your choices. If you don’t learn a new skill or read books that bring value and new ideas to your life, you will not progress further in your intellectual maturity. Essentially, you could find yourself a decade later no better of a person than when you graduated. Ouch.
School is the beginning of learning. You gain basic facts and ideas, and then you are supposed to take them and branch out. You figure out which subjects interest you and then you can pull that thread and see what you find out. Your intellectual growth isn’t just about you. It’s also about your wife. I want to be the best possible man I can be for Alison, and that involves finding ways to continue to grow.
There are plenty of ways to grow your mind, but if you’re not sure where to start, here are a few primers.
• Read. We are so incredibly lucky to live in a world where you can find a book on almost any subject. Even better, you don’t have to pay for them. The library is an amazing place if you take the time to stop by from time-to-time. I’d even encourage you to spend time reading daily. You get to choose the book or subject! There is no “required reading” list. Try not to spend too much time in reading that doesn’t bring value to your life. For example, reading nothing but fantasy books isn’t necessarily going to help you grow. Reading a book on gardening, cooking, productivity, business, or history will.
• Learn a new skill. Hopefully you have a list somewhere of things you want to learn to do. It could be learning to write mobile apps (one of mine!), how to play the piano, or a new language. The great thing about learning new skills is that they make you more valuable. You can take that skill and potentially increase your income. Even better, learning new skills are fairly inexpensive these days. You can always find a tutor or some other resource that will help you get where you need to be. Not bad!
• Pursue your interests. Experiencing new cultures or traveling is a great way to grow intellectually. Don’t travel to a beach and just park there for a week. Get out into the community and find out what makes that particular destination special. What is its history? Do they have museums or theaters? Every city has something to offer… find it!
Growing intellectually doesn’t have to be a drag. In fact, it can be incredibly fulfilling! Time is always ticking away… how will you invest yours?