Prodigal Magazine

When I was in 9th grade my best friend was a weight lifting fanatic.  Because he was getting huge, and I wasn’t getting any girls, I decided that maybe I should take up the sport with him.  So, in December we set a goal of bench pressing 225lbs by the time the school year was over in May.  Then, for the next 6 months, we went after our goal with lazer-like focus, spending a minimum of 4 days a week at the high school weight room pumping iron.

I’ll never forget the smell of that room, the strain and pain I felt some mornings after hard work-outs, and the mental effort it took to keep pushing the bar up day after day.  In the end I didn’t reach my goal of benching 225 lbs, (it wasn’t until later in the summer that I finally broke the barrier) but during those months I learned some invaluable lessons about working hard when you don’t feel like it, exercising often, and persevering in the face of challenges and set-backs.  Oh yeah, and I got a little more attention from the ladies that summer as well.

The Marriage Muscle Recently my wife and I were talking with a newly married couple about the challenge of developing and maintaining a strong marriage.  Six years into it, Stephanie and I have faced our share of ups and downs, and after sharing our marital story with our friends we all came to the conclusion that a marriage is a lot like a muscle.  If you want your marriage to grow and be strong you have to exercise it often.  If you don’t exercise your marriage muscle it will shrink, weaken, and eventually, with enough misuse or maltreatment, begin to breakdown.

So how do you exercise your marriage muscle?  Here’s 5 exercises you should incorporate into you marriage work-out.  Some of the exercises are easier than others, but if done consistently, all of them will help you sculpt and tone your marriage muscle into something that will remain healthy and strong for a long time.

#1 – Go on a date

Dating is the exercise that gets the marriage muscle growing in the first place, so it is befuddling that couples stop dating once they get married.  All the laughs and random time spent together morphs into routine TV watching and nights spent on the computer or out, separately, with old friends.  This is not a good idea.  It is similar to someone who is training for a marathon and then abruptly stops doing regular distance building runs 12 weeks before the race.  Dating is a simple exercise that keeps your marriage muscle in building mode and sets the foundation for more challenging exercises later.

#2 – Leave random notes, text messages and e-mails

Possibly the easiest way to exercise you marriage muscle is to tell your spouse you’re thinking of them during the day.  Technology is great for this.  Every so often fire off an email or a text message that says, “You’re beautiful” “Thinking of you today” or “Can’t wait to see you tonight.”  There are many ways to do this exercise.  Pack your spouses lunch and leave a not in the bag.  Write something in the snow on their windshield when you leave for work in the morning.  Write something sweet on a post-it note and stick it to the fridge or bathroom mirror.  Lay that special piece of clothing out on the bedroom floor with the words “Hurry home” next to it.  Whatever you do, it will mean a lot to your spouse to know that you took a moment out of your day to express how you feel.

#3 – Understand and appreciate your differences

This is not a new fact, but one worth repeating over and over again, “No two people are alike.”  Period.  And you wouldn’t want to be married to someone just like you anyway because, let’s be honest, you are one jacked up individual.  But even with that being said, thousands of marriage muscles shrivel and die because spouses attempt to create a clone of themselves in their covenant partner.  A better idea, a way to build the marriage muscle into something powerful, is to exercise it by understanding and appreciating the unique set of traits, talents, and trials each person brings to the relationship.  Then your marriage can flourish as you learn to capitalize on those differences for good.

#4 – Be physically intimate regularly

While this exercise is often more important to the marriage muscle of men than women, it shouldn’t be thought in only those terms.  Being physically intimate regularly is extremely important for developing a healthy marriage muscle.  Part of the design of marriage is that men and women would experience physical oneness with one another.  Physically exercising your bodies together is a profoundly critical activity for maximizing the well-being of the marital muscle as a whole.  When this exercise is neglected or not-valued by one spouse or the other, there will be inevitable damage done to marriage muscle.

#5 – Spend time talking with each other

If the previous exercise is often overlooked by one sex in the marriage, this exercise is likely overlooked by the other.  Just as exercising the marriage muscle involves physical exercise, it also involves an equal amount of emotional exercise.  Simply put, when the marriage muscle is not exercised by conversation and emotional intimacy, it will begin to breakdown.  Marriage muscles are stimulated to wellness through sharing and tenderness at an emotional level.  Prolonged introversion and a failure to share with one another is to the marriage muscle, what a 2 bags of Doritos and a case of beer is to your abs – not friendly!

From the Weight Room to the Living RoomThose lessons learned years ago in a small stinky high school weight room continue to serve me well.  The muscle I developed as a weight lifter has regressed some, but that doesn’t matter.  I don’t need it to get the attention of anymore girls.  I married the perfect one and I’m done worrying about how much I can bench.  Now I’m focused on working hard when I don’t feel like it, exercising often, and persevering in the face of challenges and set-backs, to build my marriage muscle for the next 60 years.  My pecs will be long gone by then, but with my bride at my side, it won’t matter.