Relationship Advice from a Married Couple of 40 Years
Dave and Joyce Aimes have been happily married for over 40 years. They teach marriage classes and even wrote a marriage-prep book together called “Looking Up the Aisle?” Here’s a summary of some of my favorite concepts and quotes from the book.
Cultivate a Friendship with Your Partner
When you choose a spouse you are entrusting that person to influence you for the rest of your life.
Sex is the celebration of a relationship—not the reason for it.
Your level of friendship with your partner should always outweigh your level of physical intimacy, especially in dating.
Romance without friendship is just lust.
“Lovers are always talking about their love while friends hardly ever talk about their friendship. Lovers are face-to-face, absorbed in each other while friends are side-by-side, absorbed in a common interest” —CS Lewis
Love Self-Sacrificially
There are 3 kinds of love: romance, friendship, and “agape.”
“Agape” is the decision to prioritize your partner in spite of their issues. It pulls us through when the romance and friendship sputter.
Agape sounds like unromantic hard work, but it actually ensures the romance.
The phrase, “I can’t live without you” sounds romantic but it’s actually centered around the self (when love is centered around the other).
Love invests its own resources into someone else’s well-being.
In Christianity, self-sacrificial love is the measure of maturity.
Cover Each Other’s Weaknesses
Your differences with your parter allow each of your strengths to cover the other’s weaknesses.
How do my strengths cover my partner’s weaknesses? (and vice versa)
Communicate Expectations
The bulk of marriage prep is identifying expectations. get on the same page about everything: spiritual, emotional, physical, communication, self-improvement, children, family structure, finances, and in-laws.
There are 3 levels of communication: superficial, intellectual, and emotional. Do all 3 with your partner.
Be aware of each of your “love languages.”
Marriage is a big change that always requires lots of negotiating.
Communication is important, but character is even more important.
Prioritize Your Marriage
Marriage is total commitment to another human being.
Marriage is like welding, fusing, or melting into one unit.
If you want your marriage to be a witness to the outside world, you need to have your priorities straight.
Prioritize your marriage above everything else except God.
At your job, you’re a witnesses for Christ for 40 hours a week. Your coworkers have an unusual opportunity to scrutinize your ethics, lifestyle, and personal peace (or lack of it).
Embrace Conflict
When Matthew 18:15 says not to let the sun set on our anger, it means we are responsible for addressing issues when they arise.
Conflict is part of God’s character-development program. He uses marriage conflicts to mold us into people who look more like Him. God is more committed to my character than my comfort.
When navigating conflict, focus on the offensive behavior rather than your partner’s character.
When you confront your partner, listen to their reasoning. Not feeling heard is probably the single-most inflammatory component in navigating conflict.
Don’t blame your partner for your feelings. Instead of saying, “You make me mad,” say “I feel mad when you do this.”
Don’t deny your partner’s feelings. Instead of saying, “You shouldn’t feel that way,” explore their feelings with them.
Talking in terms of “I” and “me” is less offensive than talking in terms of “you.”
Don’t Abuse Gender Roles
Headship has become falsely caricatured as authoritarian superiority.
God didn’t entrust authority to husbands because they’re more capable than women. (He usually entrusts authority to the weak as an opportunity for them to depend on Him more fully.)
When Eve is described as a helper, we might wrongly view her as a junior assistant, but God describes Himself as helper.
Eve took the first bite, yet God held Adam responsible.
God’s design for male responsibility is often abused, but if He would have split responsibility 50/50, that model would have also been open to abuse.
While scripture assigns headship to the husband, it also highlights the two becoming one. Society often downplays the headship aspect while highlighting the partnership aspect.
Authority was never meant to benefit the one with responsibility—it’s a tool to serve those under the authority. Leadership is synonymous with servanthood.
Listening by itself isn’t sufficient. Partners must interact with each other’s ideas. A husband has the wrong mindset when he fails to interact with his wife’s ideas and doesn’t consult her.
Men and women are different, so wives offer valuable insights that husbands don’t have.
“I’m in charge, so I make the decisions” is poor leadership and poor commitment to oneness.
“God created mankind in His own image—male and female.” All of God’s attributes He wanted to pass to the human race weren’t present in Adam. For example, women exemplify God’s motherly heart.
77% of women say a major cause of their anger is “He doesn’t listen.”
Ephesians 5:21 tells believers to “submit to one another” out of reverence for Christ.
If a husband is responsible for the health and direction of his family, it would be wrong for him to say, “I consider my plan to be the most effective, but we’ll do it your way to keep the peace.” That would be irresponsible.
Before making a decision, a couple should first consider all their options and exchange all their ideas with each other. After that, if the husband still considers his plan to be the most appropriate, the wife should recognize that it’s the husband’s responsibility to prayerfully follow that plan. But he should remain open to God’s intervention if the plan isn’t aligned with God’s will.
Find Fulfillment in God—Not Your Partner
Our deepest longings are for love and significance.
Some people manipulate or compete to get others to meet those longings, but God is the one we should seek to meet those longing.
God meets our longings directly through Himself, but also sometimes indirectly through others, like our partner.
We should view our partner as an agent of God’s love—not as our source of love.
Steward Your Finances
You gain a proper philosophy of finances when you have a proper philosophy of life.
We should mentally transfer ownership of all our financial assets to God.
Tithing is a constant reminder that everything we have belongs to God.
As stewards, we should handle God’s assets wisely.
Forgive Each Other
Life isn’t ruined by the ways we’re wronged, but by the way we respond to those wrongs.
Bitterness & resentment release certain hormones that can cause disease in almost any organ in the body (Dr. MacMillan in “None of These Diseases”)
When God forgives, he tears up our unfavorable information folder. We should do the same with our partner.
Resentment in marriage diminishes respect for the other person and diminishes desire for sex.
Approach Sex with a Giving Attitude
Approaching sex with a GIVING attitude satisfies for decades, while approaching it with a SELF-CENTERED attitude often leaves you in bondage to it.
Chasing your own pleasure leaves you feeling unfulfilled and wanting more. It makes you lose appreciation for the normal in search of the exotic.
Ironically, pleasing your partner brings a deep sense of personal pleasure, similar to accomplishing a goal.
God designed sex to be the celebration of a relationship—not the purpose of it.
The definition of love is “meeting someone else’s needs.”
Approaching sex with a level of suspense and adventure keeps it exciting.