Could you use a simple tip to improve your marriage?

How about 100 simple tips?

Matt and Lisa Jacobson, our guests on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Simple Steps to Improve Your Marriage,” actually have them for you.

After 25 years of marriage, Matt and Lisa looked at each other one day and decided, “Let’s each write down one hundred things that we’ve done to create a loving marriage.” When they compared notes, they realized that the present is always the culmination of little decisions that stack up over time.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage October 9, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Not much can exploit a couple’s differences like Hollywood. So, when Kirk and Chelsea Cameron married in 1991, they knew they were attempting to build a life together in a place notorious for tearing marriages down.

They spent the first several months on the lookout for outside dangers to their relationship. But a conflict one night in their kitchen taught them that the culture surrounding them wasn’t the most significant influence on whether or not their marriage would be successful.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage October 1, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

They say the eyes are a window to the soul.

If so, husbands, what are your wife’s eyes telling you? Are they alive and vibrant? Or are they tired and withdrawn?

The difference could lie in how she sees herself in your eyes. Does she see a reflection of herself as described in Scripture? Genesis 2:18 says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”

The Hebrew word for “helper” conveys the idea of a “completer.” Far from being subservient or inferior to their husbands, God has designed wives to be equal companions.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage August 31, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Are you worried that your spouse isn’t your soul mate?

If so, let me encourage you with this: soul mates aren’t found, they’re formed.

Understanding that difference often separates couples who have a healthy, intimate relationship from those who divorce.

Juana Mikels and her husband, Terry, are proof of that. College sweethearts, they walked down the aisle believing the planets must have aligned for them to find each other. Not long into their marriage, however, it was as if the planets had fallen out of their orbits.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage August 27, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Many couples contact Focus on the Family because the intimacy in their marriage has faded. Their relationship is no longer deepening, and they’re growing apart instead of becoming one.

They feel like married roommates.

Drifting in marriage happens when couples stop making their relationship a priority. After the fun of dating and the wedding celebration, other things begin to distract husbands and wives from each other. Work, children, daily schedules, and household responsibilities become the topics of conversation, and spouses stop talking to one another about what they’re thinking and feeling.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage August 11, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

How big is your marriage’s joy gap?

Dr. Marcus Warner and Chris Coursey, authors of the book The 4 Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages, describe a “joy gap” as the length of time between moments of joy. If you apply that unit of measurement to your marriage, how long has it been?

Days?

Weeks?

Months?

The joy gap can be especially lengthy if we’re waiting for our circumstances to change, for our spouse to make us joyful, or for God to zap us with joy.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage August 3, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Not many people know how to pursue marriage with purpose.

For example, when you ask single men and women what they’re looking for in a spouse, many seem unprepared to answer that basic question. The most common responses generally have to do with physical attraction. And that’s not unimportant.

But couples who want a marriage that stands the test of time rise beyond that initial connection point. They keep deeper character traits top of mind, understanding that they’re in a relationship with a whole person, not just a body.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: marriage July 27, 2020 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura