Felicia could see that she and her husband took great care of their children. She’d never had any doubt that they would. Both she and her husband had devoted themselves fully to their children from the start. Yet over the years, something had happened to their own relationship. Pouring themselves into their children’s lives had led them to stop pouring themselves into one another. Felicia knew her husband loved her. She just could no longer see how he did. Felicia could remember things he used to do for her that he no longer did. And she could remember things that she used to do for her husband that she no longer did. Felicia made a commitment to express her care for her husband more often, especially in front of the children. Felicia was realizing she needed to feel her husband’s care. She also believed that their children needed to see it.
Care
Caring for your spouse builds the foundation for a good family life. If the quality of the relationship between mom and dad is the foundation on which family life stands, then mom and dad need not only to be a good match but to consistently love and care for one another. Indeed, one proves a good match by exhibiting care. It’s not as if individuals searching for a spouse need to find a mechanical fit, like puzzle pieces or gears. A good match of spouses is instead in the care that they are able to exhibit toward one another, no matter their other common or distinct affinities. If the two of you can care deeply and consistently for one another, and express that care as family leaders, not much else matters. Don’t ignore your spouse, even if your spouse is a perfect fit. Consistently exhibit your care for your spouse, as the foundation for your family.
Expression
Expressing your care for your spouse indeed also matters. It’s great to hug your kids. But your children benefit from seeing you hug your spouse, too. What your children draw from you hugging them may be emotional warmth, closeness, and protection. What your children draw from you hugging your spouse is the strength of their family. A child needs both a strong parent bond and to see a strong bond between parents. A strong parent bond serves the child’s inner emotional needs. A strong bond between parents serves the child’s outer environmental needs. It may be just as good or better to hug your spouse in front of your kids, as it is to hug your kids in front of your spouse. Your children draw emotional stability from the love and kindness you direct toward them but environmental stability from the love and kindness you express toward your spouse in front of them.
Words
Words matter. Caring communication between spouses is like watering a dry garden. The kind and thoughtful words that one spouse sprinkles over the other not only nourishes the receiving spouse’s soul but also falls on the children. Words carry power because they express the speaker’s inner state. A kind word toward a spouse shows the condition of the speaking spouse’s heart for the other. Careless words and harsh words do likewise. The words themselves don’t exactly dissipate. They instead plant themselves in the hearer’s mind, as either seeds of kindness or thistle, where they grow either into flowers or thorns. But by showing the condition of the speaking spouse’s heart, the words also color the speaking spouse. Utter a harsh word toward your spouse, and you will have colored yourself a dark hue for as long as your harsh word resounds in your spouse’s soul. When you speak, you are not just communicating. You are painting a picture of yourself in your spouse’s mind and soul. Speak affirming rather than condemning words, even in correction.
Actions
Take great care with your words, even if actions you direct toward your spouse may at times speak louder than words. Next time you have a correction you need to make, such as when your spouse unknowingly ruins a sweater by putting it in the drier or misuses and damages a tool, try sharing the correction at the same time that you do something unusually generous. Gently mention the correction at the same moment that you bring home a nice takeout dinner or serve a favorite home-cooked meal. Your actions may take the sting from your words. Special actions show special regard. Consistently showing kindness toward your spouse in small ways can be just as helpful to a strong marriage and family. Opening doors for your spouse, greeting your spouse at the door, and carrying in things from the car that your spouse brings home can all be visible, small, frequent kindnesses. If you do yourself a kindness, like grabbing a soda at the drive through, do it for your spouse, too. Kind actions show care.
Behaviors
Behaviors also make big differences in showing your spouse that you care. The actions you take toward your spouse are plainly important to showing care. But so, too, are the behaviors in which you engage that you do not direct toward your spouse but nonetheless affect them. Indeed, behaviors may be more significant to ensuring good relations with your spouse than open kindnesses. One quickly learns in a marriage what annoys your spouse. The list can include dishes left in the sink, garbage full, clothes not put away, toilet seat not down, doors left open, tools not put away, dirty shoes in the house, walk not swept, snow not shoveled, or a car blocking the driveway. Personal behaviors can also irritate a spouse, like elbows on the dining table, talking with a full mouth, picking the teeth, shoes untied, or shirt untucked. These things might not bother your spouse in the least. But some things will. Try to avoid and correct annoying behaviors. And try not to let your spouse’s behavior bother you.
Attention
Regulating your words, actions, and behaviors to better suit, affirm, and encourage your spouse have a common theme to them: they all reflect attention. Life can be lonely, with everyone trying to manage their own moment-to-moment interests and needs. The one thing that a spouse provides above all is proximity, as in closeness and familiarity. With a spouse in the household, at least someone knows you. When you live with a spouse, you are not alone. Yet to live with a spouse who seems, in thoughtless words, unkind actions, and annoying behaviors, to ignore your existence can be worse than loneliness. Affirming words, kind actions, and respectful behaviors are all forms of attention. They are all acknowledgments that the spouse toward whom you direct them or for whom you adjust them exists and matters. Attend to your spouse in your words, actions, and behaviors. Doing so may be the greatest gift you can give your spouse, acknowledging your spouse’s existence as mattering.
Presence
Some say that time is the greatest gift you can give your spouse. Time and attention indeed go hand in hand. Your presence with your spouse, whether in the household, in outdoor chores or recreation, at meals in or outside of the home, or even on errands can be a great sign of attention. Your spouse draws encouragement from you just wanting to be near your spouse. Spouses need time apart, too. Yet your consistent desire to spend time with and around your spouse, not wrapped up in your own mind and world but instead interacting with your spouse and sharing what your spouse is doing, is a simple and clear affirmation that your spouse matters to you. Children, household duties, work duties, and other things can crowd out spousal time. But spouses can find ways to be together for some of those activities. Time with children or on household chores can also be time with your spouse, with the right approach and attitude. But ensure that you have daily quiet time together. Everyone benefits when you do.
Preferences
Spouses have preferences. Spouses can, of course, have pet peeves, things that they would strongly prefer that their spouse not do. By all means, observe what annoys or upsets your spouse, and then avoid those actions. No need, though, to tell you to do so. Your spouse’s reaction should be enough to guide and correct you. Yet spouses also have positive preferences, not just annoyances. Your spouse’s preferences may be harder to discern. We don’t always know what we like, and when we do, we sometimes hesitate to request it, whether for fear of not receiving what we request or so as not to act selfishly. Your spouse may be of that frame of mind to conceal desires rather than to invite their fulfillment. Find out your spouse’s preferences anyway, and provide them. Behavioral scientists say that positive reinforcement is generally far more effective than negative correction. One suspects that relationships, likewise, grow faster by affirmation than by correction. Do naturally what your spouse prefers, without your spouse asking, and you will strengthen marital behaviors through positive reinforcement.
Expectations
Spouses also have expectations. Expectations can have a lot to do with the health of a marriage and thus the quality of family life. Spouses should expect certain treatment and behaviors from one another. Abusive and neglectful conduct, for instance, is always entirely out of bounds. Civil treatment and respectful care is a reasonable expectation both spouses should hold and fulfill. But unreasonable expectations can make an otherwise-healthy marriage feel like a failure, not just to the spouse whose unreasonable expectations go unmet but also to the spouse who is unable or unwilling to consistently meet them. You can’t do a lot about your spouse’s expectations, but you may be able to do a lot about your own. When you find your spouse consistently failing to do or be what you expect, take a good look at your expectations. Beware holding your spouse to a higher standard than is reasonable. Your spouse’s frequent failure to meet your unreasonable standard may negatively affect your view of your marriage. Gratitude for who your spouse is and what your spouse does is generally a healthier attitude than critical judgment for what your spouse does not do. Temper expectations realistically and fairly. Enjoy what you have and receive, and do for your spouse what you would have your spouse do for you.
Adventure
A good family life should involve growth, challenge, and adventure. A good family life isn’t a steady state or slog. A good family life is instead a journey along which the family explores new terrain, to have new experiences and acquire new skills, while refining character and attributes. Family adventure can and should start with spouses. Excitement and exploration can take several forms, from travel to recreation, arts, crafts, pets, home improvement, gardening and land management, and even business ventures, anything that spouses do together that sets them in new situations and requires of them new activities and skills. Marriages grow through exposure to new situations that refresh the marital relationship, encouraging spouses not only to do new things but also to show one another new attributes and skills, and relate to one another in new ways. That invigoration of the marital relationship invigorates family life, as children explore and grow, too. Seek and welcome adventure into your marriage, as a way to refresh and strengthen family life.
Devotion
Devoting your marriage to the highest ideal also elevates your family life. We naturally dedicate ourselves to one thing or another. We do the same with our marriage and family life, whether we recognize it or not. Making an intention out of devotion ensures that you devote your marriage and family life to higher rather than lower things. Religious observance is precisely that devotion. The root of the word religion means to cohere or bind, as in to bring things together into a meaningful pattern and order. The liturgy of a religious service has the design to point one’s mind and soul upward toward God whose being and Spirit pours rationality into the mind, pattern into the body, and purpose into the soul. Religious observance with your spouse points not just each of you but also the two of you together toward the highest ideal. Regular orientation toward the better and best things in life, indeed toward the source of life, keeps a marriage growing, secure, protected, and healthy. And when spouses share religious devotion, they orient the whole family toward the best life that resides in God’s generative life and ideals.
Reflection
On a scale of one to ten, how well do you care for your spouse? What words, actions, behaviors, adventures, or devotions would improve your care for your spouse? What care does your spouse prefer and desire? How do you express your care for your spouse in front of children or others? Have you seen how your care for your spouse encourages your children? Have you seen the opposite, how your failure to care for your spouse discourages your children? How much time do you and your spouse spend together on average in a day? What activities do you and your spouse enjoy and do well together? Do you and your spouse try new activities and adventures together? Have you and your spouse grown together in your bond, capacities, trust, and security over the course of your marriage? Do you and your spouse worship, pray, study scripture, or otherwise engage in religious disciplines and observances together?
Key Points
Caring for your spouse ensures the quality of your marriage and family.
Expressing care for your spouse encourages both spouse and children.
Kind and affirming words toward your spouse nourish your family.
Generous and thoughtful actions toward your spouse encourage all.
Respectful behaviors toward your spouse set a household standard.
Attending to your spouse encourages your whole household.
Your presence and time with your spouse confirm the marital bond.
Supplying your spouse’s preferences strengthens marriage and family.
Adjust expectations to reflect realities, while expressing gratitude.
Adventure refreshes and strengthens both marriage and family life.
Devoting your marriage to the sacred promotes a good family life.