Your marriage will not survive on trial and errors or on unestablished assumptions until you acquire and develop the seven habits that guarantee a successful marriage. These seven habits are patterns of behavior given by God to be used in the marriage relationship to help couples make their marriages what he created it to be which is Jesus centered marriage. A successful marriage must run on divinely established habits which I summed and call the seven habits that guarantee a successful marriage.
Developing the seven habits that guarantee a successful marriage relationship is very important because you are into marriage to have and enjoy the best of marriage. You are not into marriage to experience pains, sorrows, disappointments, heartbreaks or divorce. These seven habits will help you to overcome any form of negative experience that your marriage is into.
The process of developing the seven habits that guarantee a successful marriage is not easy; that is why it requires a strong and burning desire, high-level life of discipline and rugged determination; above all it also requires complete trust in the power of the Holy Spirit. But the good news is that you can do it.
THE SEVEN HABITS ARE:
- Self Analysis
- Patience
- Control words
- Quiet time
- Glowing intimacy
- Forgiving spirit
- Money management skills (MMS)
SELF ANALYSIS.
My marriage made a 180 degrees turnaround from a negative path to a positive path the day God told me that I am the problem of my marriage and not my wife. That revelation was the push I needed to go deep into self-analysis and subsequently a lunch into the process of continual improvement in my marriage.
Matthew 7:1-5.
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults — unless, of course, you want the same treatment. 2 That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. 3 It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. 4 Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your face is distorted by contempt? 5 It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
You must understand yourself.
Acquiring and understanding the habit of understanding yourself will unlock a lot of good doors in your marriage. When it settled on me that I was the cause of my marital problems, the first fault I discovered about myself was that I believed that my wife will never make a statement without offending me. This was a lie but I choose to believe it and it was causing a lot of friction in my marriage. The moment I called it a lie, things began to change for better between me and my wife.
It takes you to save your marriage.
Before God spoke to me, I was thinking that my marriage will change for better if my wife changes. The Holy Spirit helped me to found out that it was a lie. An unchanged person cannot change any person. If I don’t change, my wife will not change and our marriage will not change.
It takes you to save your marriage. What you need is to make positive changes to yourself. A change in your behavior will lead to a change in the behavior of your spouse. Marriage begins to get better when couples are willing and ready to make the needed adjustments, needed changes and stick to the requirements and discipline of progressive improvement.
Take a self-audit.
Take a frank and wholistic look at yourself. How do you communicate with your spouse? How are your romance and sexual relationship with your spouse? What will your spouse say about you when it comes to behavior, love, fellowship, friendship, recreation, etc.
PATIENCE.
Patience is one of the habits that guarantee a successful marriage because the bible said that when your patience (enduring ability) develops, that you are going to be perfect needing nothing (James 1:4). Stop expecting perfection from your imperfect spouse. Lower your standard and take it easy. Your spouse cannot meet up with your expectations overnight. You cannot also become the best in one day; therefore all you need is to be patient to yourself and your spouse because two of you are not perfect.
Patience is a habit that you and your spouse must have because without it marriages crash and end in divorce. Don’t be too hard on yourself because you are not living up to your expectation or your spouse because she/he is not living up to your expectation, rather prayerful endure and continue doing the best of what you can do and the desired or expected result will begin to come in’
CONTROLLED WORDS.
An uncontrolled word or utterances will rock your marriage while a controlled word is a kind of habit that guarantees a successful marriage because it brings hope and love and expectation when spoken. Words are powerful; they can build, it can destroy therefore you must acquire and develop
Try as much as possible to avoid offensive, abusive, insulting and degrading words on your spouse. Don’t kill your spouse with your words. Remember two of you are one, you are in your spouse, and your spouse is in you. Accord her that respect that you want him/her to accord to you.
QUIET TIME.
Quiet time is the act of withdrawing to a secluded place alone to give a deep thought about yourself, your spouse or what is going on in your marriage. Marriages cannot survive without deep thinking from couples. Learn to think before taking action because this habit will help your marriage to be successful
Don’t be quick to judge or come to a conclusion on sensitive issues. Take out time and present the matter to Jesus. Listen to his voice (the easiest way to do this is through the study of the bible). Seek peace that helps to be in a balanced emotional state. The habit of quiet time is golden therefore discipline yourself to learn it because it is going to help your marriage.
1 Corinthians 10:13 said that God has provided a solution to every problem therefore, quiet time is the habit of shutting your mind from every form of distraction in search of a way out or what to do. God has provided a solution to every issue of life; don’t forget this. This habit of quiet time when mastered will guarantee a successful marriage.
GLOWING INTIMACY.
Many marriages hard crashed today because of a lack of intimacy. Where is the level of your marriage intimacy (on a scale of one hundred present)? Is intimacy in your marriage glowing or is it dim or has it gone out?
Glowing intimacy in a marriage is a process of bringing down everything that hinders interpersonal relationships and inculcating things that build up close and a warn relationship between couples. This is very important because lack of intimacy gives room for all forms of marital problems and nobody is in marriage to endure but everyone is in marriage to enjoy the best that marriage can offer.
I wrote a blog post title 10 steps to Growing an intimate marriage. What will you say about sex and romance between you and your spouse? Are you running a marriage without sex? Does your marriage have sex but without romance? What will you say about your spouse? Are you proud or ashamed of him/her?
Any marriage without the habit of glowing intimacy will not be successful therefore if you desire and want to have a successful marriage, you must build the habit of glowing intimacy in your marriage.
MASTER FORGIVENESS.
The habit of forgiving your spouse will keep your marriage fresh and evergreen. Forgiveness is one habit the when you learn and continually apply it, it will give you a better, happier and successful marriage.
Offload every garbage and flush it down the drain.
In 2014, I and my friend Pastor Thaddeus were mediating in a marital matter between two young couples. The young lady told us that she had a diary where she keeps a record of the wrong that her husband does to her with a date. What made the shock so intense to me was that she uses one half of that diary to records church sermons and messages and the other half to record the wrongs of her husband.
You might be saying that she went to the extreme; I agree with you. The bad news is that she is not the only person that does this because unforgiveness is so common in today’s marriages. Couples are keeping head or mind records of the wrongs done to them by their spouse as far back as their dating years. People like this can remember vividly a twenty-year-old offense done to them. These are habits are cancerous and will destroy you and your marriage.
Forgiveness Will Give You A Successful Marriage.
Keeping a record of offenses done to you by your spouse will take your marriage down the destruction, pain, sorrow, disappointment, heartbreak and final death (divorce). I believe you don’t want any of these for your marriage. If you desire a successful marriage, you must develop the habit of forgiving your spouse always ( except when he/she commits the same offense 490 times in the same day) because this habit guarantees a successful marriage
MONEY MANAGEMENT SKILLS (MMS).
Money that comes easily disappears quickly, but the money that is gathered little by little will grow. Proverbs 13:11
A woman that I counseled in Orlu in Imo State told me that the major reason for the friction she was having with the husband was that her husband wants to know how much was her salary, and she vowed never to tell him. The reason was that there was no openness between them.
There Must Be Openness.
Adam and Eve were naked and not ashamed before they were deceived. To be naked and not ashamed means that they were open and sincere; not hiding anything from each other. Hidden sin or interior motives impede openness in a marriage relationship. Finance and money management will always be an issue in any marriage were couples are hiding things from each.
Be open to your spouse always. This also is dependent on the maturity level of your spouse and the prevailing circumstance. For instance, Abraham did not tell Serah about sacrificing Isaac because she would never accept that. The bottom line is this; don’t have any skeleton in your cupboard.
Learn And Plan Together.
Plan carefully and you will have plenty; if you act too quickly, you will never have enough. Proverbs 21:5
Have you attended a money management seminar or workshop with your spouse? Have you discussed anything you learn about financial management with your spouse? There is a need to
plan your finance together with your spouse. Make a budget together with your spouse. Two of you should be aware of the expected income and expenditure of the family. This type of habit ease tension and make the burden lighter for everybody and brings success to your marriage. This is working for me.
Save And Invest Together.
Invest what you have in several different businesses because you don’t know what disasters might happen. Ecclesiastics 11:2
Accountability is put in place when couples save and invest together. Encourage your spouse on the importance of saving and investing together. This requires high-level discussion and communication most especially where couples have different ideologies on savings and investment. God made two of you be one therefore you are expected to have a lot of things in common.