The Key to a Happy(er) Marriage

PC: Alicia Cram Photography

I like to observe.

I observe people who appear to be in happy marriages, and I observe people who clearly are not.

Here is what I have learned about the key to a happy(er) marriage.

The key to a happy marriage is this:

Look past each other's faults and just love

Unhappy marriages have a tendency to nitpick at each other's faults no matter how small and insignificant they are.

I have seen marriages like this that last an entire lifetime and they never ever change.

From the time they are twenty to the time they are eighty, they still spit fire at each other over the very same things.

Over and over again. Day after day. Year after year.

Then there are the happy(er) marriages.

The ones that are able to laugh with each other over the same dang things their whole lives.

When a man asks his spouse where his keys are, and the wife just looks at him and laughs instead of scolds and folds her arms and scowls.

When my husband and I were first getting married, I heard time and again this advice:

"Choose your battles."

It is ok for us to have faults.

If we pick at each other's short comings week after week, it will never ever end!

We will literally be discovering a new imperfection to whine over for the rest of our lives.

Is that what we want? Is that what marriage was truly intended for?

What if we instead took it one SITUATION at a time!

Your spouse may have a hard time remembering things.

And maybe it's ok to laugh about it until it's something important.

Then you can "fight" over it in a healthy way.
(To me, something is only worth fighting over if it is causing actual damage to the relationship. Otherwise, it can be easily looked past and/or laughed about.)

The point is, nitpicking can last forever.
So can love.
Which sounds more appealing to you?
Which sounds like a healthier environment for your children to grow up in?
When you get to the end of your life and you are laying on your death bed, will you be more satisfied over how many fights you won with your spouse, or how much you loved him/her fiercely?
On the other hand, when your spouse is on his/her death bed, will you be looking back on all of his/her irritations or on all of the laughs and magically intimate moments?

The key to a happy(er) marriage:
Look past one another's faults, choose your battles, and LOVE!