When it comes to taking good care of your marriage, there's more required than simply knowing the right thing to do.
You actually have to do it. Here's Ron Deal. My wife and I know how to dance. You know, we on the Family Life cruise every year, we've learned how to ballroom dance and we get a little better at it, a little better at it. But you know, during the pandemic, we didn't dance a lot. Like we find moments where we do, but it's kind of like you need something to kickstart that.
Just because you know how doesn't mean you will. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.
I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. So maybe some of us need to dust off our dancing shoes or whatever it is that promotes us-ness in your marriage. Maybe we need to find some ways to draw closer to one another. We're going to talk more about how we do that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today. Thanks for joining us.
There's this illustration I've used for years. I've said to couples, how would you think of your marriage differently? If I told you on the day you got married, if I told you this, I said, I'm going to give you a car the day you get married.
I'm in. I like a car for my wedding gift. And it's the best. It's a top model car. It's a car you want. Here's the thing. It's the only car you will ever have for the rest of your life. That's good to know.
So knowing that, I've said two things. Number one, you are probably going to do a better job of taking care of this car from the get go, saying we better do the scheduled maintenance. We better make sure we do everything we need to do. Better not let my wife drive it.
I was thinking that we would need bigger than a two passenger vehicle. Yeah. You're probably going to need not a Ferrari Roadster, but a minivan to start with, or maybe a Tahoe or a Suburban, depending on how many kids you're going to have, right? Right.
And you're right. We wouldn't miss any of the maintenance. You'd get the maintenance done. And if something went wrong with the car and you knew this is the only car we got, you'd take it in and get it fixed because that's your only alternative. Rather than thinking, I wonder if it's time to trade the car in, you would go, I don't have a choice.
This is the car I got. And then I would say, did you get that lifetime warranty on the vehicle? But that's the point of marriage.
If we thought about our marriages that way and thought this is the marriage I'm supposed to have for the rest of my life. So knowing that I better take better care of it from the beginning. And when something goes wrong, I don't have an alternative.
I got to go get it fixed because this is the only one I got rather than thinking, do I swap this one out for another model? I fix this one. It's the one I've been given for the rest of my life.
If couples would think that way about marriage, don't you think that would cause them to start to view their relationship differently? I think so. I know. So that's a great analogy. But what did you steal that from?
I have no idea. But all great analogies have been borrowed from somewhere. You know that as well as I do. All work and no plagiarism leads to a boring sermon. We've got our friend Ron Deal joining us on Family Life Today. Welcome, Ron.
Thank you. And I'm glad that I work for a God who doesn't mind if I plagiarize right out of his Bible. Exactly. That's a good response.
As a matter of fact, he encourages it. Anybody who has ever spoken or preached knows this. The first time you quote somebody, you say, as my friend Ron Deal says, and then the second time you say, as I've often heard. And then the third time you say, as I always say. So that's kind of how that whole thing goes.
Ron gives leadership to Family Life blended and is a writer and a speaker and is here with us today because we're talking about a fundamental issue. And that is how do we do the work of regular oil changes and tune ups and tire rotations and alignments, all of that stuff on a marriage relationship so we can keep the marriage out of the shop and have fewer breakdowns along the way. Prevention is worth a pound, if not a thousand pounds of cure. I had a professor in graduate school who used to say, you know, marriage is like the grandfather clock at the end of the hallway. If you don't go down there and wind that thing up every once in a while, it just stops working. And man, I have never forgotten that. Like, that's part of what we do is wind up our marriages. Marriages, by nature, entropic.
It will drain itself of energy unless we go down there and wind that thing up. I'm liking the clock better than the car. Yeah, I'm liking it. What's wrong with my car analogy? I'm at the table with three guys, so that would be typical, but I'm kind of liking the clock. Can we make this more like a football illustration? No. You've got to practice.
You've got to train. Here's what I was going to say, though, in both of you, when you talk about winding the clock or an oil change, I think a lot of us, and I think listeners might be doing this right now, thinking, yeah, my wife needs an oil change. My husband needs an oil change. You're not thinking about the marriage as much as you're the person. Or you're thinking, I'm always the one to wind the clock. Good point. So, I mean, you do want to take your eyes off the person who's got all these weaknesses and you don't have any and say, OK, we both have weaknesses, so the clock is the marriage. The car is our marriage.
How are we going to maintain that? And when you get a new car, there is a booklet that comes with it that's got scheduled maintenance in it. They tell you.
That's in there? 6,000 miles, 12,000 miles you're supposed to do this. Look at your glove box. If you've got the clock, you know that once a week or whatever the rotation is for you, you've got to wind it up or it is going to break down. When I got married, we did not have anybody say, here's what the maintenance schedule for your marriage should look like. And I just figured it was kind of an in-self maintenance mode that we would, by virtue of being together, we would grow closer. That's what happened when we dated. So I want to ask both of you, why is maintenance in marriage harder than maintenance in dating was? Why is it that when we're dating, we just kind of naturally, the energy is there and we're together and we go and then you get married and all of a sudden it's like, leave me alone.
I want to watch this and give me some time. Why is that the case? Well, the biochemical warm fuzzies that drive us to pursue somebody, be infatuated with desire, want to pursue them in a relationship, that lasts for about 18 months. But that's energy.
It's a constant dose of amphetamine, if you will, to your heart and to your energy to pursue the other individual. Which you're saying 18 months. 18 months is about how long that infatuation drive biochemical thing lasts.
It could be shorter. Some of you, it runs out pretty quick, right? Depends on your age when you start. That's right.
Or how many kids you have in the first 18 months, things like that. All kinds of life factors can crash that amphetamine drive pretty easily. But if you're just in a normal situation, there's a point where we say the honeymoon's over.
And that's what when we say that phrase, we're saying the amphetamine kick isn't there like it used to be. My wife and I know how to dance. You know, we on the Family Life cruise every year, we've learned how to ballroom dance and we get a little better at it, a little better at it. But, you know, during the pandemic, we didn't dance a lot like we find moments where we do. But it's kind of like you need something to kickstart that just because you know how doesn't mean you will.
Us-ness requires a kickstart. And sometimes that's a biochemical thing. It's driving you towards that. But most of life, I think it is about conscious choice that we say, how can we invest time and energy and let's dance a little bit. And there's a physics law.
Tell me if I'm right. Second law of thermodynamics says what? It's the law of entropy, that everything that everything that is in motion is going to run out of energy eventually unless you got something to push it along with. Yeah.
And I remember being in a college class physics and learning that law and never thinking that applies to relationships. But it does. Yeah. Us-ness is entropic. Yep.
Unless you go down there and wind up the clock. Right, Ann? Yes. And as we're talking, we should know that going in. We're at a high right now. This is passionate. It's new. It's wonderful.
It's fresh. It's not going to last. And when you start to feel that go, it isn't like, oh, we're in trouble. It's like, oh, this is normal.
Yeah. This is what's going to happen. And to keep that even close to maybe not all the way back to where it once was, you're going to have to wind the clock.
You're going to have to do the checkup. You guys, this is like big. What we're talking about, we've all known for a while, but I'll never forget hearing that for the first time, that this feeling, this infatuation, this love will change. Because I think a lot of people think it never will. I mean, the movies don't show it going away necessarily. Right. And so I think that's important to know. This is normal. And when it changes, it doesn't mean the marriage is over. Or you're not in love anymore.
That's right. And so you've moved into a new phase of your relationship. And this new phase, here's the tricky part. This new phase is going to be a little harder to get things started. I'm back to my car analogy. You know, you've had it for a few years and it coughs a little bit before it starts.
It doesn't go before you have to get it started. But the ride is actually going to be more comfortable. It's going to be richer and deeper when you're in it because it's not so much just an emotion-fueled experience. Now there's a deeper level of connection that's starting to form and build in this new phase of a marriage relationship. Well, Ron, is it harder because our feelings aren't as high? And so we're doing things out of more of an act of our will? Yes.
Okay. And I've got to say, when I got married, I was a complete idiot. I mean, I was so ignorant and naive about any of this that we're talking about. I just don't think I had any idea of what it would take to continue forward with us-ness. And there's two ways of looking at what we're talking about here. One way is, oh, man, that doesn't sound romantic or fun or there's no chemistry anymore. No, that's not exactly what we're saying. We're just saying that chemistry doesn't necessarily drive you towards your us-ness.
But the other way to look at it is to say we're going to mature our love. Our us-ness may have been driven by pure chemistry for a season, but now it's got to be based on something else than that. We've got to work on the engine in the car, not just put a new coat of paint on it. We've got to actually deal with the car, what makes it go.
And that's going to require more of me than the chemistry season of life. Here's a different illustration that may- I don't know, Bob, we've got the clock, we've got the car. It better start with a C. Cooking.
Okay, so here's the illustration. There are some meals that you would get and you would go, this is great. I can put this in the microwave and in four minutes I've got Thai food that is ready in four minutes, and it's hot and it's good. Well, so now you don't have a microwave anymore.
Now all of a sudden you've got to prepare it. It takes a little while longer and you're in the kitchen, you've got to cut things, and then it's got to simmer on the stove for a while. But when you taste that Thai food that you cooked, you go, this is better Thai food than the microwave. I mean, the microwave was there and it was quick and it was satisfying.
And now this stuff that takes a little longer and a little more work winds up being, this is even better when you get here. Okay, now you lost me. How's this apply to marriage?
Not me. Okay, here's my question. Explain how this applies to marriage. Wait, what if you feel like, you know what, I've been doing all the cooking. I've been taking the car to the shop, I've been winding that clock, and my spouse is doing nothing. So I'm tired of cooking and winding and taking my car in. I'm not going to do it for a while. I'm going to see if my spouse has anything that they want to do in the relationship.
Okay, but winding the clock is not your problem. The problem there is that it feels like the other person doesn't want you as much as you want them. It feels like a lopsided relationship, and at that point you're not feeling chosen or cherished. This is why we need a therapist. I didn't know we needed a therapist until right now.
No, this is really important because this is what we all do. When we're in those moments and we feel like the other person isn't quite there for us, like they used to be or like we would like for them to be, then we get goofy. I mean, I do. I mean, I start doing things to try to get my wife to want to be with me. You know, you drop hints or you maybe get a little passive aggressive or you complain.
You just flat out complain. I'm doing all of the work here. How come I have to do all the cooking and initiate this?
And you're just kind of not really participating. So really what we're saying is I just need to know that you still love me, still want us. And that feels super vulnerable to ask that question because it's the deeper issue. But to say to your spouse, it feels like you're not pursuing me. It feels like maybe you don't love me. And that's a scary answer. Well, it is because they might say I don't.
And if you get that answer, you'd rather not know than to know that answer. At least that's how it feels at times. Part of the reason we're talking about this today is because we've had so many couples who have been saying, when are you guys going to have a weekend to remember marriage getaway again that we can go to? Because those getaways have been catalytic for us. That's been a weekend where we've taken our marriage into the shop or where we have turned on the slow cooker and really let it simmer for a while. Our marriage has been recalibrated in those weekends, and we need one of those recalibrations.
And with COVID and with ballrooms and spikes, we're just not able to have the same number of getaways that we've been able to have. So our team went to work and said, what could we give to couples that would somehow be catalytic, something that was kind of a do-it-yourself engagement that would help them restart some of these processes, do a little preventive maintenance on your marriage? And we came up with the dates to remember date box that couples can order. In fact, we were thinking with Valentine's Day coming up, you could order this now, have your first date on Valentine's Day. I think there are three dates in the box. So you have your first date night all planned out for you with everything you need to pull it off. And you have the date, and then you schedule your next date.
There are, again, three in the box. So Valentine's Day goes on. It's really Valentine's Day plus plus that you get out of this. It's like Valentine's month. Exactly.
And each of these dates, there are four components. There's a game that you play together. It's an interactive, fun, spontaneous game.
There's a video that you watch. And then there are questions that you interact over as a couple. And then there are some prayer suggestions for you.
And so your date night gives you a chance to have some fun, to learn, to grow. We're really trying to set you up for conversations you would not otherwise be having. And those conversations, that's where the mechanic who is the Holy Spirit comes along and says, Okay, we can adjust this. We can tweak this. We can make this so that the ride is better.
We can rewind the clock so that it chimes next week. You know, we've been married 34 years. And in the beginning, we had conversation that lasted hours and hours and hours.
But let me just own something. You know, once you get to know the basics of this person that you're married to, once you spend a lot of time together, when you've talked about lots of things under the sun, sometimes you kind of look at each other and go, What else do we talk about? What else do we talk about that's not work, that's not the same old subjects? To me, having something like this that sparks conversation in a fun way, it's kind of like a game. That's always fun. That is often what Nan and I need.
We just need a spark to move us in a certain direction, and then the conversation can erupt and take off. You can get a preview of this. Look at it. Go to familylifetoday.com. All of the information about the Dates to Remember date box is available there.
You can order it from us online. Again, go to familylifetoday.com. And whether it's this date box, this is just one way to try to catalytically get you going in terms of regular marriage maintenance.
I don't know about you guys. Did you start with a game plan, Dave and Ann? When you got married, did somebody tell you you should date once a week or once a month or you need to do something, and did you do that at the beginning? Yeah, I remember the first time we heard about a weekly game plan was at the weekend, remember? Sitting there as an engaged couple, and we sort of laughed.
Dennis said it. Dennis Rainey said married couples should date weekly. Again, it has to be every seven days, but we got to pull away and focus on our marriage. We laughed, because we're engaged couples. We're dating every day. And you think, when you're married, you're together all the time.
You don't need to date. Well, actually, we now know. It was really interesting, and we put this in our vertical marriage book, because so many people would say, okay, if we're going vertical in your marriage, that means you're putting God first. So you add a little God to your marriage and everything works out.
Okay, that's not what we're trying to say. And it reminded me of something I heard Rick Warren say decades ago about your spiritual life. And we can all relate to this. If you want to grow in your relationship with Christ, I'll never forget, in a sermon, he said you need to divert daily, withdraw weekly, abandon annually. And I'm going to cross the guys.
I'm like, oh, D squared, W squared, A squared. And he was just saying, it's like a workout. If you're going to change your body, every day you're going to do something.
So he's saying divert daily means you're busy, you're crazy. You're going to pull away for five or 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, and you're going to get in the Word of God, because I want my spiritual life to grow. Once a week, there's a principle in the scripture called Sabbath. Withdraw weekly means once a week rest. Focus on your walk with God.
Stop doing your regular work and focus once a week. And we violate this command, by the way, Ten Commandments. And then once a year, abandon annually is go to retreat. Go to a spiritual retreat. Men go to men's retreat. Women go to women's retreat. Go to a couple, whatever.
Pour into your thing. And I thought, as we were writing Vertical Marriage, oh, my goodness, it's the same in your marriage. If you want a great marriage, maintenance looks like once a day, we just changed a little bit.
We said pray together. So once there's a daily thing, once a week date. And again, I know sometimes that's impossible, but get a rhythm where you pull away, you grab this date box or whatever you need to do to go out and say, we're going to spend a couple hours at least once a week and we're going to work on our marriage. That's maintenance. And then once a year, get to a weekend to remember. Get to a marriage retreat. You're going to be changed.
That's going to keep that car running pretty good, right? Exactly. I remember we'd had maybe three or four kids and Mary Ann threw a flag on the field and she said, look, we have got to have a time out every day because we weren't having it. We were busy. She was swamped. So the idea that she had that we started to implement was when I would get home before anything else happened after I got home, we would have our 10 to 15 minutes of what we called couch time.
Everything would stop. She and I'd go sit on the couch and we would debrief about our day, talk about whatever had come along, about what we needed to do. It was just a reconnect time. We didn't pray in that moment, but there was a relational reconnecting that was happening.
In a sense, you're pulling up that dipstick on the oil and saying, how are we doing? Exactly. And the kids would always try to come in and interrupt it. I mean, they wanted dad's home.
Let's play. We want attention. And we would say to them, no, mom and dad are having couch time right now.
This is our time, not your time. What great security that brings to your kids. Maybe not they don't recognize it at first, but ultimately they're seeing a marriage that this is a priority.
Yeah, they started to respect and honor that. And then, of course, after we'd huddled for that 10 minutes, then when we broke the huddle, she would go back to making dinner and I'd go play with the kids or do something. Then we could go and engage in the rest of the evening. But we'd had our huddle up moment, our reconnect moment, something like that on a daily basis as a part of marriage maintenance.
One of the things I'm thinking about as we talk about this is seasons and circumstances, because I know in our 34 years, there were seasons where we could not date once a week, twice a week, once a month. We couldn't afford it. Kids around our ankles. We never lived where there were grandparents.
It was always on us. And yes, we'd try to find friends. Hey, we'll babysit for you. But let's just talk to people for a minute who are going, yeah, we just can't do that for whatever reason. Maybe job loss, maybe caring for an aging parent that is 24-7.
And you just, it's really difficult. I think the spirit of what we're seeing here is it's not so much about getting out and spending money, as it is about finding time to nurture that us-ness. And it doesn't have to be dramatic. It doesn't have to be necessarily, you know, for a season, it could be a small investment of time.
10-minute chunks at the end of the day. I was sitting there watching a movie on Netflix on Friday night. I think that's important because at least I did. I don't know if other people hearing this message sometimes go legalistic on it and they think, oh, man, we're bad. I'm a bad husband. I'm not leading well because I don't take my wife out on a date. I think what we need to remember is it is about investing time and being intentional and just nurturing your us-ness. One of the things about the date box that the team put together here is this is not something that you have to spend a lot of money to go do something to make it happen. No. You can do this after you put the kids to bed and you're in your bedroom and you play the game sitting on the bed and you watch the video and you can talk right there.
And I think that's one of the great things about the date box is it's a catalytic to get you to do things you might not naturally do. Right. And I guarantee you this, it's going to have you talk and your wife is going to love to talk.
Yes, she will. On this couch. You guys, the thing that I remember most about that first weekend remember conference that we went to was I remember Dennis Rainey saying we are either moving toward oneness or isolation. Right. And I remember thinking, wait, you mean I have to really work to get to oneness? And if we don't, we're going to slip into isolation? That really motivated me to think I need to do something to keep us moving forward. And this is something.
Yeah. And that's why we're encouraging listeners to be intentional. And if the date box, the dates to remember date box can help you with that, get this sent to your house and plan to use it Valentine's Day or before Valentine's Day. I mean, there are three dates in the date box, and this is kind of a recipe for pursuing oneness in your marriage.
We've distilled down some of the best learning we've had over 40 plus years of doing weekends to remember. And since a lot of couples haven't been able to come to a weekend to remember because we haven't been able to host them, we thought let's take the learning from the weekend to remember and send it to people's homes. So you can go to familylifetoday.com and order the dates to remember date box. If you have any questions about it, check it out online or call 1-800-FL-TODAY.
You can also order by phone. But plan to be purposeful and invest in time together as a couple. Again, find out more about the dates to remember date box online at familylifetoday.com or call to order 800-358-6329.
That's 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now, tomorrow we'll continue this conversation. We want to talk more about how we can be purposeful and intentional, how we can lean in and pursue oneness in our marriage relationship. Ron Deal is going to join us again tomorrow. Hope you can join us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.
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