Do
you have 6 hours a week to devote to your marriage?
Dr. Gottman teaches us about 6 different things we can do to improve our marriages.
1. Parting
o
Learn one thing that
is going on in your spouse’s life that day
§ Time: 2 min X 5 work days = 10 min
2. Reunions
o
Hug and kiss for 6
seconds after arriving home to your spouse
o
Stress reducing
conversation for 20 minutes.
§ Time: 20 min X 5 days = 1 hr. 40 min
3. Admiration and appreciation
o
Communicate some act
of genuine affection towards your spouse every day.
§ Time: 5 min X 7 days = 35 min
4. Affection
o
Show physical
affection sometime during the day. And maybe even a goodnight kiss.
§ Time: 5 min X 7 days = 35 min
5. Weekly date
o
One on one time that
can help you to relax and reconnect.
o
Ask open-ended
questions to continue to get to know one another (even if you think you know
everything)
§ 2 hours each week = 2 hr.
6. State of the union meeting
o
Talk about how your
relationship is going this week.
§ Time: 1 hr. each week = 1 hr.
Total = 6 hours a week
There is very little time spent every day,
but just a little bit each day can help the marriage to grow. A while back I decided that I would make sure
to kiss my husband hello and goodbye every day.
That has made a big difference. Now I just have to figure out how to
train him to do the same.
I also love that we chosen to have some
affection towards each other every day also.
This is not always easy to do, but as we work on each of these things it
gets better. Also we have started to try to have weekly date nights. This is harder than I thought it would be. We
as a couple are having to learn to define what a date is to each of us. This can grow the relationship as you get
time to spend one on one and can learn more about each other. Even after almost 18 years of marriage there
are things I am learning about my husband on a weekly basis.
I am going to try to incorporate this
into my marriage and I hope that each of you will do the same. We can all hope to find the Magic in our marriages again, who knows
maybe we will even create some Magic.
References:
1. Gottman, John M., The Seven Principles for Making Marriage
Work, 2015
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