Areas › Your marriage
Your marriage
What keeps a marriage well is not the big gestures. It is knowing each other, turning towards each other in ordinary moments, staying regulated when it gets hot, and repairing quickly when it goes wrong. Most of the practices here take under five minutes.
Narrowed down
5 practicesTheme · Fondness and admiration
Approach · Core
Do not say the small unkind thing about them to someone else.
Today, notice the moment when you could make an easy joke at your spouse's expense, to a friend, a sibling, your mother, the group chat. Don't. Say…
Take the sarcasm out of one conversation today.
Contempt is the most corrosive tone in a marriage; its opposite is plain, warm respect.
Do not make the easy joke at their expense to someone else.
Guarding their dignity when they are not in the room is a quiet, powerful loyalty.
Raise the complaint without the words always or never.
One specific moment can be repaired; a sweeping verdict on their character cannot.
Notice the tone you use with them that you would never use with a guest.
The people closest to us too often receive our least careful manners; this gently reverses that.