If I had a time machine, there are 10 pieces of marriage advice I would love to tell myself when I was a blushing bride. This month, my husband and I are celebrating 5 years of marriage. We have been through a lot in a very short time and have worked hard to cultivate a thriving relationship. As we look back on our marriage, I am blown away by how much we have both grown. I am by no means an expert, but I have learned a thing or two about being a wife and building a healthy marriage. Here are the 10 pieces of marriage advice I wish I could have told myself when I was a newlywed.

1. Marriage Is Not About You

I did not get married because I believed my husband would make me happy forever, though many people do. We got married because we loved each other and believed we could build a life together. I had a genuine desire to grow with him and serve him the best I could. However, my selfishness was never more apparent than it was during our first few years of marriage. I married an incredibly gracious, forgiving man but that doesn’t mean we didn’t hit a few growing pains along the way. A lot of our issues were because of selfishness and not focusing on the eternal purpose of our marriage. I will say, we have not had very many big fights in our marriage. But the ones we did have were because we were being selfish. Marriage is not about me, it’s not about my husband and it isn’t about you. The purpose of marriage is to refine us and project the message of the Gospel to the world. My husband is called to love me sacrificially just as Christ loves the church, and I am called to love him by respecting him and submitting to his leadership. (Ephesians 5:22-33) This does not mean that I don’t get to state my opinions or that I have no say in what happens in our marriage, but the ultimate decisions for our family fall to my husband. He is called to make these decisions putting me before himself and I am called to trust that and follow his lead. This is incredibly difficult to do if you believe that marriage is about you and your happiness. But, when both parties are committed to the eternal purpose of marriage, it becomes a beautiful picture of the Gospel.

2. Pray Instead of Pestering

This one took me way too long to figure out but marriage got a lot easier once I did. If I had to pick just one piece of marriage advice to tell my freshly married self it would be this: you are not your husband’s Holy Spirit and no amount of voicing your disappointment is going to change him. Mark does things very differently than I do. He procrastinates and takes a long time to get things done if he doesn’t view them as a priority. If he has a deadline, he meets it but barely. If something is due at midnight, he is turning it in at 11:59 PM. This works for him but causes me no end of anxiety and stress. Usually, it’s something that affects both of us and I used to think him putting it off meant he didn’t care how it affected me.  Or I used to. We had multiple discussions about this and I used to pester him over and over until the task was done and I could relax. But that caused him a lot of stress and led to him feeling unloved by me. Eventually, I decided to start praying for him instead of constantly pestering him and this path produced much better results. He feels less pressure and is prompted by the Holy Spirit instead of me. At the same time, prayer is changing my heart towards him. Instead of using my words to prod him along, I can use my words to lift him up. I can encourage him and let the Holy Spirit do the heavy lifting.

3. Stop Spending So Much Money On Clothes (or Insert Your Thing Here)

I used to overspend on clothes like crazy. I worked at Charlotte Russe and I used that employee discount to it’s fullest. But this spending habit of mine put a lot of strain on our budget. We were both still in college when we got married and didn’t have a lot of money to begin with. We discussed finances during our pre-marital counseling but we weren’t fully sharing our money yet and were both living at home, not paying anyone rent. When we moved in together and started learning how to budget, we realized my monthly shopping habit was almost as much as our rent. It took me a long time to hone that in and learn how to stick to a budget.

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Financial literacy is so important for marriage. Money is one of the biggest things that couples fight about. Getting on the same page about money with your spouse will make your marriage much more harmonious. I tried to hide my spending from my husband for a while because I was afraid he would be mad. But that didn’t fix the problem and we were still losing that money. During those first few years of our marriage, we started having business meetings. We discussed our income and expenses for that month and decided together what we would do with any excess funds. Sometimes we had a mutual goal, other times we disagreed on how to spend (or save it). We spent time praying over our finances and asked God to lead us in stewarding our money well. Over time this got easier and though we aren’t millionaires by a long shot, God has blessed our diligence in this area.

4. Show Enthusiasm For Things You Don’t Care About

My husband LOVES video games. And I really don’t. I actually could not care any less about video games but he enjoys them. I didn’t pay much attention to this interest when we were dating or when we were first married. Eventually, though, I started to realize that he wanted to discuss them with me. Not a lot and not in-depth, but he wanted me to care about his love of them. So, I started to pay a little more attention to his love of video games and other things I don’t really care about, like tv shows he likes or sci-fi books he is reading. I started watching him play a little, letting him talk to me about the plot (I use that term loosely) and tell me about his progress in this game or that. I noticed that this made him perk up a bit and engage in conversation with me. Not that he didn’t before, he is a great communicator, but now we had a whole separate subject to discuss. This is not one of our most used subjects, but it does add to our intimacy. He feels cared for and attended to when I show enthusiasm for things that he cares about but that I don’t. If I want him to be excited about things he doesn’t care about, I had to set the tone. He really doesn’t care about my love of clothing or the new planner I just bought or the really cute coffee mug I picked up at Target. But when I enthusiastically show him those things fresh from the bag, he pays attention and discusses them with me. He shows me he loves me by pretending to care about my adorable coffee mug. He is excited because I’m excited. If I want to show him love, I can choose to be interested because he is interested. Whether or not I care about the new edition of Assasin’s Creed.

5. You’re Going to Be Repeating Yourself For the Rest Of Your Life

If you are a type-A personality married to a type-B personality, you are going to fully understand this piece of marriage advice. I write things down, I plan out my life on paper and in spreadsheets. I love calendars and all things organization. But my husband does not. He does not write things down. He is in seminary right now and does not have any kind of planner or tracker for his homework and this still blows my mind to this day. When I tell him about plans or dates, he doesn’t write them down. So I end up repeating myself, A LOT. When we were first married, this drove me nuts. He would consistently ask me multiple times a week when a bill was due or what our plans were for the weekend or when someone’s wedding was. (Mind you, their save the date was on the fridge, but that’s not the point). This communicated to me that he wasn’t listening and didn’t care what I was saying. I n reality, he just had so many other things he was remembering that he needed me to repeat myself to make it stick. He was asking me multiple times because he cared. He wanted to know that information. I used to get so frustrated by this part of his personality, but I eventually learned that what needed to change was me. We had a really good discussion one night where I told him what that communicated to me and he was able to explain what he actually meant by asking over and over. Going forward, I happily repeat myself because now I realize this is another opportunity for me to love and serve him well. I remember the things for him to help keep him on track. I am his helpmate and this is one major asset I bring to our marriage. He doesn’t expect me to change my personality to fit his pet peeves and I don’t expect him to either. We are much happier when we accept our spouse as they are and quit trying to change them.

6. Apologize Even When You Are Right

If my husband was even an eighth of the amount of stubborn that I am, our marriage would’ve imploded by now. He is always the one who reestablishes intimacy after an argument and is almost always the first to apologize. He has such a humble heart and always puts our marriage first. I, however, am not that great at apologizing when I’m wrong. I’m even worse at apologizing when I know I’m right. There is a well-known quote out there that says “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” But I think love means saying you’re sorry even if you think you shouldn’t have to. Nothing brings reconciliation faster than humility. Nothing softens a hardened heart like taking your share of the blame. Once you are both calm and able to think clearly, you can openly discuss your differing opinions and reach a compromise or solution, together.

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7. Learn To Cook

I don’t say this because I believe it’s a woman’s job to cook, but because my husband had absolutely no interest in cooking. Some husbands love it, but mine does not have an affinity for it. He does, however, do the dishes so I got the good end of that stick. 🙂 For the first few years of our marriage, I really rejected my role as homemaker. I didn’t want that to be part of my identity. My pride led me to believe I was better than that and that I had more important things to spend my time on than building a home. Oh how long I believed this lie from the enemy. No matter what I am doing outside my home, my first ministry is always at home. This means caring for it and tending to it with love and diligence. And if my husband has no interest in cooking, then I need to take up that mantle. Once I got started, I realized I actually really enjoyed creating healthy meals to fuel our bodies and help our budget. Organization and planning are things I love to do and cooking is another outlet for me to use those gifts. I get to plan out meals and shopping lists and practice being a good steward of our money. I get to serve my husband this way and he gets to serve me by doing the dishes and cleaning up my mess.

8. Speak His Love Language

If you don’t know what the love languages are, you need to learn! The basic premise of the love languages is that we all feel loved in different ways. Some of us feel loved when our partner affirms us with words, serves us with actions, gives us gifts, spends quality time with us or gives us physical affection. We also show our love to others through these avenues, but they may not line up with how the other person feels loved. Your spouse may feel loved by receiving gifts but you might show love by physical affection. There is a love language barrier there. It is important to learn how to speak the love language of our partners so we can love them better. My husband receives love through physical affection and quality time. I, however, receive love through acts of service. If we don’t work to speak the other person’s language, we can quickly begin to feel unloved by our spouses. Actively seeking out ways to speak their love language helps to communicate that they are a priority to you. Speaking my husband’s love language might not be in my comfort zone or be fun for me all the time, but I would rather my husband feel loved by me than selfishly stay in my comfort zone.

9. You Are Going To Have To Work At Sex

This is surprising to a lot of couples. The newness of sex eventually does wear off and life gets intrusively busy. Sometimes it doesn’t work that well right away and you struggle logistically to have sex at all. This does not mean that you give up or that something is wrong with you. The media hits us with the lie all the time that if you love someone and are attracted to them, sex will be amazing and it’ll just happen naturally. WRONG. You will have to work to make your sex life a priority, and it is a priority. Sex does happen organically sometimes, but it is not the norm. The enemy specifically targets this area to kill thriving relationships. Intimacy in marriage works a lot like water to a plant. It’s not the foundation like the soil is, but if you go too long without it, that plant will start to wither and die. The same is true in marriage. Re-establishing intimacy in marriage may feel awkward and like it’s never going to work but keep persevering. The more sex you have, the more it will happen on its own. Communicate your needs and desires to your partner and vice versa. Get creative and try new things. Put your phones down and engage in some intimate conversation. (I have a whole list of Date Night questions in my Resource Library that you can download for free!). Go do something fun and get laughing together. The mundane, everyday hustle and bustle of life can be a real downer when it comes to your intimacy. Be intentional about making sure that it doesn’t take a toll on yours.

10. It is Okay To Enjoy Sex

Yup, I’m going there. When Mark and I were engaged, his mom threw me a beautiful bridal shower. She had all of the people who had seen Mark grow up to come to meet me and shower me with love and gifts. It was probably my favorite shower just because of how sweet my mother-in-love was putting it together. One thing she had all her friends do was write marriage advice for me on white notecards. As I was reading through them towards the end of the shower, one of them said “Take pleasure in pleasuring your spouse” and my face turned so red you would’ve thought I was a cartoon character who ate something hot. This is not the kind of marriage advice I was expecting but looking back, I appreciate her boldness in addressing that topic. She very plainly told me that my spouse was my source of intimacy and my outlet for sexual desire. As a married woman, I can enjoy that! I can find it fun to explore this new, intimate thing with my husband. Sex is a good thing. It isn’t everything, but sex itself is not evil. Our perversion of sex as a culture is what causes all the problems. Sex inside the covenant of marriage is beautiful and blessed. Don’t be afraid to enjoy it.

What about you?

What pieces of marriage advice would you give to yourself as a newlywed? Have you gotten any good marriage advice from others? Tell me in the comments! With love, Ashley

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