Hello from Dulles International.
Susan and I are heading to Hawaii for the 36th anniversary of our honeymoon there in 1979. We have a practically perfect marriage. Hopefully, the next 36 will be as good as the first.
How have we held our marriage together for so long? By understanding and using the P10 Principle to make our combined life Great! All the time! through marital symbiotics. We both know the best part of each of us and our marriage will quickly and simply die if we do not nurture the symbiotic relationship of our marriage.
Staying married nowadays seems to be one of the most profound challenges a couple faces. It takes constant investment of some of all eight of the types of our life’s precious resources (self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people) to build and maintain a symbiotic marital relationship like we have.
Marriage is a psychological revolution that changes our relation to almost everything and everyone around us, not just our selves and our spouses. Priorities get shifted, roles get redefined, and the balance between freedom and responsibility gets massively overhauled.
Making a family, even a family of two, requires spouses to redistribute their resources, rights, and responsibilities. Creating one sensational single couple from a couple of sensational singles takes all of the seven affirmative P’s in the P10 Principle (proaction, perception, planning, preparation, practice, and persistence promote practically perfect performance).
Maintaining a practically perfect marriage and family at a high level takes using the P10 Principle almost every day in almost every way you live your lives in the service of each other. If you don’t apply the P10 Principle to your marriage constantly, you will almost always fail to keep the spark alive and a sparkless marriage soon dies a cold and angry death.
Here are seven ways to make your symbiotic marriage practically perfect:
Ask for help. It takes two to tango. People hate to admit they cannot do everything they need all by themselves. Your spouse will always be your greatest resource, but you have to ask for his or her help, with specific details, in order to get the help you need.
Pitch in. It takes two to tango. People hate to be put upon, so don’t view your spouse’s request for help as a burden. Think of each plea for help to be an opportunity to excel at work, in this case homework, and thrive in life.
Give and take time off for good behavior. Make sure that each of you two individual people in your symbiotic marriage has time to himself and herself and commits to preserving some form of personal primacy. Release the guilt you may feel when doing something solely by your self, with only your self, and for your self. More importantly, release your partner in life to also live a part of his or her life alone. Alone time is critical for each individual to feel complete, which is an important ingredient for your symbiotic marriage staying practically perfect and increasingly and unceasingly vibrant.
Stay out late on a monthly date. Plan and execute one carefree night with your spouse at least once every month. Put your relationships with and responsibilities to any person, place, thing, or idea other than your spouse aside for at least one night each month.
If you’re a doctor or a lawyer or just an employee or a parent constantly at your patients’ or clients’ or bosses’ or child(ren)’s beck and call, get someone else to handle them, turn your darned cellphone off, and go focus for an evening on the most important relationship in your life (after your relationship with God and your self).
And stay out as late as your spouse wants to. Not until you’ve had enough, but until your spouse has had enough. Go out all night and don’t worry about when you have to be back home. This gives you excitement for your outing and a glimmer of your past life as a couple of swinging singles. Just because the rest of the world has structured responsibilities, doesn’t mean you have to live like that every minute of every day as well. At least once a month, go out and allow yourself to enjoy some open-endedness that reconnects you to the sense of wonder, possibility, and anticipation of the other you had while you were dating in your first month together.
Do something new and different. Skip the typical movie night, and instead, plan an experience that’s new. Novelty breeds testosterone, which hopefully leads to other breeding activity.
Plan your night out well in advance. Build anticipation and mystery around the activity itself. Anticipation is important, as is connects us to our imagination (the antidote to responsibility).
Plan your monthly date together, but work on it separately though symbiotically. For many couples, it helps if one person is responsible for the adult end of the planning (date night activities, researching vacations, booking reservations, etc.), while the other focuses on the coverage details, like handling your kids’ end of things (reserving babysitters, packing overnight bags for the grandparent’s house, etc.). Systematic symbiotic distribution works; one partner holds vigil for the family, the other focuses on the couple. Remember how much you need each other, and practice being grateful for your complementarity. Never blame your partner for not focusing on the same important priorities as you. Properly planned, prepared, and practiced, your spouse has his or her on oar to row getting your love boat launched.
And, finally, and, most importantly, when you finally get out on that monthly date night, do not spend the time talking about work, friends, or, if you are blessed with them, the children. Talk to each other about each other in ways that enhances your unique, intensely personal relationship.
Make homemaking easier through marital symbiotics. Cooperation is the name of the game. When you both work together well, well then you can play the same. You don’t have to sacrifice enjoying life to have a well-tended home. Shift cooking, cleaning, and other tasks from a chore to a quick and lively part of your morning, afternoons, and evenings. Clean house together, do the laundry together, cook together, eat at home and eat together. But do all this stuff as easily and efficiently as possible, by constantly looking for ways to make your homework life as simple, quick, healthy, easy, and inexpensive as possible.
Don’t depend on God to “work it out,” but rather plan your life together together. The important word here is plan. Structure doesn’t stifle freedom; it leads to it. This concept is often hard to get your head around, since it’s the opposite of what you have probably thought most of your life. The single biggest thing most unhappy couples do not do and the most important thing practically perfect couples do well is plan their lives in fairly immaculate detail using their values as their guide.
Pray together daily. The couple that prays together stays together. Whether your prayers are as short as “Good bread, good meat, good God, let’s eat!” or a long as the hour a day others spend talking to God, take some time to bond with the third party of your symbiotic marital relationship. As Solomon says, “A three-ply cord is not easily broken.” Intertwine the Third Ply in your practically perfect symbiotic marriage to keep it that way forever.
[reminder]Susan and I are working on a Save Your Marriage with Marital Symbiotics Webinar, but we need your help. Tell us, what’s the biggest obstacle to your marriage being Great! All the time!?[/reminder]
Have you ever thought, when God mysteriously sends you the perfect opportunity to do something new and different, “Should I or shouldn’t I snap this up? It’s almost too good to be true.” Yeah, me, too. And the times I have passed on such things still haunt me to this day.
