If you and your spouse are sitting there saying, “We have no time, we don’t have the money, we don’t have family in town, we don’t have babysitters, or the ones that we do know we don’t trust, we don’t know where we would go, we don’t know what we would do, we are kind of stuck in a rut and don’t know how to get out of it,” I talk about my favorite thing.
What I want to suggest that you try is my favorite thing of all time, and it’s coffee shop date nights.
There are so many reasons. I spell it out in my latest video, but they’re easy, they’re simple, they’re convenient.
So many reasons you’re going to love it! Once you do it, once you get the taste of it, you’re going to get addicted.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
If you’re hearing your spouse say this, or if you are the spouse that’s saying this to yourself inside your head or out loud for everyone to hear:
“This is just who I am.
I’ve been this way.
This is what I’ve done all my life.
I’ve always been this way.
I’ve always done this.
You can’t want me to change.
Why would you want me to be different?”
I want you to see how that’s not something to brag about and that it might just be the biggest lie of them all— and a lie that’s not serving you as an individual, even outside of your marriage, but certainly it’s not serving you inside your marriage.
And so, I want you to know that you can.
You can stop telling it, and you can stop living it.
You married?
Question for you: How are you starving your marriage right now?
I know, so subtle, but for real—where? Right?
What is your energy leak?
Where are you suffocating your relationship with your spouse at the cost of something else?
It doesn’t have to be a big thing to derail your progress.
That’s right.
It can be a tiny little leak that lets all the air out of a tire.
Right?
So, what is it?
What is it that’s starving your marriage of oxygen?
And the moment that you find yourself minimizing the answer, you know that you’re on to something.
In my two cents: Pay attention, and figure out now what that growth stunter is, so that it’s not too late later.
I hear my couples say this to me all the time.
Sometimes it’s the wives, and sometimes it’s the husbands.
It’s not that I am jealous of you spending your time, your effort, your money, or your energy, right?
With your friends, or with your co-workers, with your college buddies, with the neighbors, or even with our kids, right?
In the time that you have.
But it’s that I don’t—I really don’t like to be an afterthought or feel like I’m one.
And if you hear this and you’re like, “I don’t think I’d do that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my spouse say this to me,” if you at all are unsure, I want to invite you:
Save this video, show it to them, and say, “Hey, do I do this? Do I make decisions that leave you feeling like an afterthought?”
Either way, it’s going to be a win.
It doesn’t have to take a lot of time or energy, for that matter.
Sometimes both in life and in marriage, like, it literally is just four words.
Four words that will take your regular old Monday and change it from mundane to unreal.
Somebody just walked out of my office and said, “I love coming here, and I already love what I do.”
So, like, right? That’s… and it still brings me, makes me… goosebumps.
And so then I wonder, right?
What would four words do for your marriage?
“I love sitting here with you.”
Or “I love working on this with you.”
“I love making dinner.”
Or “I love cleaning up the kitchen with you.”
“I love having time with you.”
“I love going on a walk with you.”
Try it tonight. See what goosebumps you might create for your spouse.
